


In the Ruins of the Stars

by willowaus



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hades/Persephone mythology intertwined
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-19 07:27:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 58,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4737785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowaus/pseuds/willowaus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Klaus lost her once. He's not about to lose her again. No matter what it might take to get Caroline to remember who she is and who they once were to each other. A Hades/Persephone Klaroline AU (though mostly canon until 2x08)</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Klaus lost her once. He's not about to lose her again. No matter what it might take to get Caroline to remember who she is and who they once were to each other. A Hades/Persephone Klaroline AU (though mostly canon until 2x08)

_she is the sunlight,_  
the sun is gone  
__**trading yesterday**

* * *

He had thought he'd known pain and despair before, having been surrounded by it for more years than he could fathom in the land that was his own. Death was a welcomed friend, one that walked along with him wherever he stepped, surrounded him with every breath he took, every glance he made. He'd long ago accepted it, overcame his annoyance with his brothers who'd taken the more cherished realms, leaving him to his darkness.

But then she'd come along and there had been light and love in his life. Laughter filled his realm, along with music, and a sense of happiness that he'd never felt before. It ebbed whenever she had to leave for her other duties but her smile when she came back to him helped ease that time apart.

Now she was gone, blotted out like the rest of the gods, one after the other and while for the rest he could do nothing, there had to be a way to bring her back. The world would tremble at his feet if there wasn't.

"Where is she?" he bellowed as he burst into the small home of the three Moirai, eyes narrowed as he took in the three hags, watching as they cut another string.

"We knew you'd come," Clotho mused, pulling out another string from her never ending supply and handing it over to her sister.

Lachesis smiled at him as she wrapped it around her hands, getting it to the exact length that was needed. "When you learned she didn't merit the same fate as you."

"Even if you should have known that already," Atropos tsked before cutting the latest thread.

Rage filled him at their words, working into the heart of him and if he could he would have ripped them in two for what they were saying. But nothing could break them apart, no weapon or even god hands could tear their limbs, leaving them far more powerful than any who had come before or would come after her.

"Yours," Clotho told him as she held up a new string with a grin before passing it to her sister.

He held his head high, not fearing them, but the string wouldn't break, the scissors twisting as they tried, refusing to let him follow his heart wherever she may have gone. They cackled, the laugh setting his teeth on edge before they disappeared, leaving him with nothing as more stars blotted out of the sky, the universe growing even darker.

It seemed the fates were forcing him to continue on with only darkness as his friend, the shade even worse than it'd been before his life had been touched by her light. There was no use in standing around and he vanished, appearing back in the palace room he'd shared with her only days ago. A new dress hung to the right, ready to be worn by his Queen.

He couldn't stand the sight and slashed it, tearing the fabric into pieces until it lay around him on the floor, before he fell to his knees to hold onto the scraps as he seethed for the injustice of it all.

He heard the footsteps and didn't bother to turn around, wondering who was foolish enough to disturb him there.

"I did something."

Hecate. Why did she live and his love die?

"I don't care." What did it matter what any of them did anymore?

"I loved her too."

He nearly lashed out at that, for her daring to speak of her love for Persephone as anything comparable to his own, but he didn't have it in him, knowing his dear wife would have hated him if he did. Even in death he couldn't hurt her like that.

"I saved her," the goddess continued, and he turned his gaze toward her, not quite believing until he saw the truth in her eyes. "As best I could."

He was on her in seconds, fingers biting into her arms, eyes flashing dangerously as he demanded she tell him every last detail. She told him everything, nothing left out, and the darkness that had been threatening to swallow him whole eased just a bit.

Hope was a powerful thing. It could destroy as easily as it could save or even rebuild; it could drive one mad.

"Do it," he demanded as he released his grip, gaze locked on her.

"Neither of you will remember a thing," Hecate reminded, her power flowing through her as she watched him. "Not until its time and you've accomplished what's needed to be done. I cannot say how long that will take."

"I don't care how long it will take," he muttered. Not if it meant Persephone would breathe the same air as him again, not if it meant he'd see her sweet smile and the light dancing in her eyes. "I'll wait as long as I need to."

"There's no guarantees," she pointed out, hesitating slightly. "You'll be born mortal." So many things could go wrong if he took this chance. He might never even make it past the first few years of a human life. "You'll never be as you now are." No longer a god but not tied to the fates either.

"It will give her a chance at her living again." And that was all he needed.

Pain rippled through him, tearing into every fibre of his being and ripping him apart until there was nothing left.

Somewhere the fates cried out in anger at the thwarting of their carefully crafted plans, the world blotting out into an all consuming darkness before it was set aflame, life renewing in a different way than before.

It took years, more than Hecate could have ever imagined, but with a cry he greeted the new world, seemingly wailing at all that had come to pass before then.

On that day the third son of Mikael and Esther breathed his first breath, a god almost renewed.

* * *

Klaus wondered if the sensation of a sword being thrust into his gut, leaving him to bleed out slowly as he watched the rest of his siblings slain in front of him, would ever truly leave him. It'd only been a few days since his parents had killed and brought them back to life, making the lot of them into something more powerful, more dangerous than the werewolves in the next village. His mother had meant for them to survive where Henrik had not, to be able to take care of themselves where she'd been unable to protect them, but it seemed the darkness in her magic had created something even she could not have foreseen.

He'd seen her troubled looks as she watched them now, gaze following them as they butchered the entire werewolf population of the village-leaving no man, woman or child alive. The bloodlust hadn't been something that Esther had anticipated and the fear ran rampant in their own village, worry that they would meet the same fate as their neighbors.

Except Tatia didn't fear them, she seemed to covet the attention from Elijah and he even more, desperate for the protection that they could now offer. Even now he knew she was off with his older brother as the sky finally began to darken.

It would be the first full moon without the wolves roaming about. There would be no need to hide away in the caves, to cower in fear that one of the mangy beasts would tear them apart.

"Where are you going?" Esther asked as he started off toward the woods.

"A walk." For his little brother who hadn't made it. He would take it all in and then tell Henrik all about it when he visited where his ashes had scattered into the wind.

"Niklaus," there was a warning to her tone that he ignored, continuing his trek.

He didn't make it far though, body twisting, bones beginning to break. Klaus screamed out in agony, dropping to his knees as his body contorted, a second set of fangs breaking through his gums, eyes flashing yellow.

"Oh god no," Esther gasped from behind him before there was yelling that he couldn't quite make out, only knew that Mikael has stepped into the fray and was shouting at his mother.

Pain reverberated through his body, skin and muscle shifting and stretching, bones cracking to form into new ways. Vaguely he could hear the insults that his father was throwing at him, could almost make out Rebekah's frightened cry, Elijah's gasp of denial as their mother sobbed. But everything was pushed aside as his mind was ripped apart.

Memories of a forgotten time split through him, filling his very soul with images, thoughts, and feelings that were tearing the very fiber of him apart. It was too much for his fragile human brain to handle and he blacked out, not knowing what was happening with his body as the memories continued to bombard him.

The darkness of the reign of the Titans. The war. His brothers and sisters. Doling out the realms. And then more darkness as he settled into his reign as King of the Underworld. Darkness predominated the memories, wrapped him in a blanket of never ending loneliness even as he was surrounded by the dead and those loyal to him. Betrayals and lovers, friends and enemies ghosted through him, slipping through his fingers as he remembered each and every one of them.

Until her smile.

He watched her dance in the fields, daisies popping up wherever her feet touched as the sunshine seemed to glisten in her hair. The loneliness seemed to ebb, the darkness that had been a blanket of despair for him no longer felt heavy on his shoulders.

Love bloomed, her laughter echoing through the halls of his palace. He remembered the slide of her body against his, the slip of her hand in his as she pulled him through the corridors to show him a new surprise. Watched as she doled out fair judgement on new souls, showing compassion sometimes and a coldness that rivaled his own with others.

And then she was gone.

The coldness of the darkness enveloped him again, the fates cackles igniting rage from deep within.

He remembered the despair at knowing he was supposed to go on with only the memory of her laughter, of her touch and love.

Hecate's words rang deep within him then, reminding him of who he was and what she'd sacrificed to bring about a second coming of the goddess they'd both loved. Telling him all he had to do so his dear Persephone would remember who she was when he did find her.

Klaus woke with a splitting headache, his head an absolute mess and for a moment he wondered if he was going crazy. The images he'd experienced made no sense and yet at the same time were too real, too right to have been a lie. There was a deep urge to push it all aside, to bury all he'd learned and not to try and come to grips with it, but the laughter remained, her sweet scent filled the air around him, and he wanted to sink his fingers into the softness of her curls again.

_Persephone._

He wouldn't forget her, he couldn't.

"You're no son of mine," Mikael spat and it was only then that Klaus realized he was bound to a tree.

No, he wasn't. The breaking of his bones on a full moon signified only one thing and Esther's troubled gaze when he'd set out to leave suddenly made sense. He looked over at the woman he'd called mother-though she was still, wasn't she? Mother to this incarnation of him. Better than Rhea perhaps. Klaus remembered Esther's soft touch, her soothing words as she put him to sleep and it mixed with Rhea's firm but once loving voice before it had all gone to hell.

"I'd think you'd be happy for the knowledge that I wasn't actually one of your whelps," Klaus bit out. Mikael had always seen him as the weakest of his brood. Shouldn't it have been a relief to know he actually hadn't had part in his birth.

"Do it, Esther," Mikael ordered before stepping back.

"Do what, Mother?" Klaus demanded as Esther stepped forward, wondering what plan the two had apparently concocted.

He didn't like the pity in her eyes, but it was the fear that had him knowing this would not end well for him. "None of you was meant to be more powerful than the other," Esther murmured and then pain sliced through him again as she started to chant.

Tatia was brought out a moment later, crying for release, as Mikael threw her to the ground in front of them. Another from the village was there and Klaus could see the crazed look for blood that he'd seen in his siblings' eyes when they'd first turned. A ring of fire enveloped the three of them, a final one circling around Esther as she continued her chanting.

The fire died off in sections, creating a path as she went into each one, slicing open the vampires hand for blood, cutting Tatia's throat for more, and then she headed to Klaus, slicing his arm to let some of his blood trickle into the cup she held.

"It's for your own good," Esther murmured as she stroked his cheek before Mikael stepped back into the picture, forcing Klaus' mouth to stay open as Esther poured the liquid down his throat.

It took a moment for Klaus to realize what she was doing, locking the werewolf half of him away, preventing him from living in completion. He screamed out, not for the pain that coursed through his body, but because Hecate had warned that he would need for both dualities to be in play in order to revive Persephone. If his wolf was locked away then his blood would be meaningless when he did find her.

He thrashed against the ropes, tried to spit out the blood, but he'd swallowed enough already and felt the power of his wolf stripped from him, locked just out of his reach. His rage bellowed out of his mouth, the urge to smite the two standing in front of him overwhelming. Hecate's words rang in his ears about how he'd no longer be a god or have those abilities at his disposal.

He remembered being powerless at Mikael's hands as a child, remembered the times Esther had turned her back to his pain and suffering, and Klaus vowed that even if he was no longer a god that he would not be powerless in the face of the two of them ever again.

Mikael walked away, leaving Esther with him and the dead that surrounded them. "I am sorry," she murmured after a few moments and Klaus let himself look defeated, hid the rage that bubbled inside of him ready to burst out at any minute.

The ropes were cut free and he allowed his body to drop to the ground, let her think him weak and frail as she helped him to his feet. The monster in him waited for the opportunity to attack. After all, Esther was a witch and far too powerful to take on headfirst without knocking her off her game.

"Why, mother?" he asked, something he'd wanted to ask his other father once. The one who'd wanted only power and for the world to tremble at his feet. Kronus, much like Mikael in that regard.

"It was never supposed to come to this," Esther sighed as she helped him to lean against the tree.

"No, it wasn't," Klaus murmured and before she could even breathe he had her pressed against the tree, one hand locked around her neck, squeezing as the other pressed against her chest, nails biting into her skin right where her heart lay underneath.

A half hour later she lay dead at his feet, the knowledge of how to break the curse she'd lay upon him swirling around his mind. Klaus turned back to look at Tatia, the brunette's eyes still open wide with fear even if she'd never breathe again. He needed to memorize this face, to keep it locked in his memory until he came across it again. It'd be a key ingredient whenever her doppelganger turned up again.

Klaus had no clue when that would be but he would search the world over until he found her so he could undo what Esther had done.

Rebekah's scream echoed through the clearing as she stepped into it, Elijah on her heels. Klaus turned toward his siblings. It'd be so easy to walk away from them now, to continue on alone, but he'd done that for eons once before, sequestered himself to a realm where no one else ventured, rarely seeing his siblings.

He did not want to live that existence again.

"Father killed her."

* * *

"I have the photographs," the witch told him and Klaus grinned, whirling around on the chair to hold out his hand toward Greta.

She licked her lips as she bounded toward him with the apparent evidence of a doppelganger finally existing in the world again. Technically there were two out there, but Katherine hardly counted any longer considering she'd ruined all of his carefully crafted plans five hundred years ago. Running from him through the centuries, always looking over her shoulder and fearing his imminent presence, seemed a fitting punishment.

Klaus took the small stack of images one of members of his network had managed to procure. He flipped idly through them, noting Tatia's eyes and hair, the same curve of her lips on the brunette in the various pictures.

"Her name is Elena Gilbert," Greta drawled out, as she perched herself on the desk he was sitting at.

He ignored her for the moment, stopping on a photo of Elena with another girl with blonde hair. He couldn't see the girl's face, but her hair invoked memories of another, of one he'd never stop searching for. He flipped to the next and the world seemed to cease moving as he stared down at the photograph.

He knew this face, he knew those eyes and that smile like he knew the back of his own hand.

"Persephone," he whispered, too low for Greta to make out as his fingers drifted over the young woman's face.

A thousand years and he'd never caught a whiff of her being born, never glimpsed a sight of her in any of the places he'd gone. Her likeness was all wrong in the statutes just as his had been. None of the renderings of the gods true to how they had actually looked and that had cut deeply at times when he'd wanted to have something of hers to hold onto beyond memories of a forgotten eon.

But she was alive.

She was real.

And she was right where he needed her to be, beside the doppelganger who would he needed to help restore his beautiful queen's memories.

"Where is she?" Klaus demanded, finally paying attention to Greta again.

"Mystic Falls, Virginia," she told him and Klaus laughed.

Of course she would be in the town where his own childhood home had once lay. Did she dance across the fields where he used to play? Run through the forests that he'd hunted in, where he'd cradled Henrik in his arms as the boy died? Where his mother had ripped him apart and put a damper on carefully crafted plans?

He dismissed Greta, ignoring the witch's pout as he continued to stare at the photograph.

"Soon love," he murmured before pocketing this small link to his heart.

He hadn't lied to Elijah all those years ago when he'd told him that they did not feel, they did not care. Five centuries and he'd not glimpsed his reborn wife once, his heart becoming steel in her absence, frozen like it'd been before she'd entered his world.

But just as she'd managed to do in a field, the mere glimpse of her in a photograph was enough to chip away at that exterior, to ignite the spark he'd almost given up on.

He'd lost her once though, endured the agony of being parted from her a thousand years already, he would not endure doing so ever again. God help anyone who got in his way.

It seemed that he had plans to make and a ritual to speed up.

* * *

A thousand miles away Caroline Forbes woke in her bed enveloped by a feeling of darkness and couldn't quite shake the chills that ran down her spine as she tried to fall back asleep. The worst part was that as it settled into her bones it almost felt like home, a sense of completeness that she wanted to wrap herself in forever, but it disappeared almost as soon as it had set in, leaving her feeling utterly alone.

 


	2. Chapter 2

_I look at the sky and find her reflection among the stars_   
**Vazaki Nada**

* * *

Elijah had always thought that it was an odd sensation to come back to life, energy rippling through him as the haze of death was shirked away unable to claim him. His skin cleared back to its normal hue as he came to his senses. Anger rippled through him, partly at himself for being overtaken by the idiots who'd rescued the doppelganger but mostly it was at the fools who'd dared to get in the way.

His hand gripped the makeshift stake ready to pull the infernal wood from his chest when he heard the blasted pinging of a game on a cellphone.

"Took you long enough." Kol's voice echoed through the entryway and Elijah frowned at the sight of his youngest brother lounging on the stairs, engrossed in whatever game he was playing on his phone.

"You could have sped up the process," Elijah pointed out as he yanked the wood out and let it drop to the floor with a thud. He'd like this suit. It was one of his favorites and there would be no salvaging it.

Kol cursed at the game. "Bloody little bombs." He finally looked up with a wide grin. "And ruin your much needed nap? Perish the thought." He flicked his finger across the screen, pulling up some photos he'd taken of himself by a 'dead' Elijah. "I quite like my work. Would you say its as artistic as Nik's paintings?"

Elijah rolled his shoulders, cracked the kinks out of his neck before pressing his lips together at the photographs. There was little point in trying to get his brother to delete them. Crushing the phone would only result in Kol shoving the stake back in him and taking his own phone to repeat the process. They didn't have time for that nonsense.

Not with actual proof of a new doppelganger being nearby in the town they had all originally come from. "I need to call Niklaus."

"So your little rendezvous with Rosemarie went better than expected?" Kol asked as he pushed himself up, pocketing his phone. "Is Katherine nearby for us to try out a few more torture techniques on? Because I don't think Nik will care too much about that now."

Elijah couldn't help but frown briefly at the reference of torture against Katherine but that particular vampire wasn't a factor this time. Though her current whereabouts would be a nice little addition to what he'd learned. "It seems that Rose and Trevor managed to stumble across a doppelganger," Elijah told him as he fished his own phone out of his pocket.

Kol didn't seem at all excited about that news. "About that…" His younger brother shrugged. "Know how we were supposed to meet tonight? But you pushed it back by an hour to deal with whatever Rose wanted? And then you missed the meeting." Elijah waved his hand for Kol to get on with it.  
"Thank god for Nik's paranoia and that little app he has us all install that let's us locate one another with our phones. I suppose I should thank the humans too for inventing it in the first place. They're a bit paranoid too. Can't say I blame them, being on the bottom of the food chain and all."

"Kol," Elijah sighed, aggravated with the spiel.

"Nik already knows about the doppelganger." Kol held up his hands. "That's what I was supposed to be telling you. Letting you know we're going to be meeting up in the old homestead in a week."

Elijah pinched the bridge of his nose. "And why didn't you simply tell me this on the phone?"

"You know how Nik is about telling anything pertaining to that mess over an 'electronic device'." Kol rolled his eyes at their brother's paranoia. "If you hadn't made the little detour with Rose you'd already know this. Though where is she? I saw her usual companion decapitated in the other room but not a sign of her anywhere."

"I don't know." She'd left when everything had gone to hell. "If she is smart she will be trying to get across an ocean by now." But the girl had thrown in her lot with Trevor so the likelihood of Rose actually being smart about everything was slim.

"Think she'll be an issue?" Kol asked, murderous gleam in his eye as he swayed back and forth on his feet.

"If she is I am sure you'll be the one to deal with it." Just as he did with any issues that usually came their way. "Where is Niklaus now?"

"He should be arriving in DC in the next hour," Kol replied as they finally headed toward the door. "I can't wait for you to tell him how you  _had_  the doppelganger and let her slip through your fingers." He chuckled darkly as he bounded out the door and down the front steps, leaving Elijah to wonder what he'd done to deserve Kol as his companion this decade.

He would have rather endured another century with Finn and his dull sense of humor than have to deal with Kol's constant antics. Perhaps he shouldn't have criticized that landscape of their Russian palace as quickly as he'd done the last time he'd seen Klaus.

But they now had the location of a doppelganger, the moonstone, and as an added bonus of dear Katerina as well. She'd make a fitting vampire for the ritual Klaus would need to perform, maybe finally getting some peace in the death she'd managed to break free of once before.

Hopefully the reveal of Persephone wouldn't be too far behind because Elijah wasn't sure how much longer the family could handle the continuous search for a girl that only seemed to exist in their brother's mind. Even with all of the conquering, the building of a supernatural network over the years, acquiring the services of only the best, and gaining more power than anyone could dream of, it never was enough for Niklaus.

Elijah didn't think it ever would be until he found the girl. Some days he wasn't sure that even that would be enough to stop his brother from his hunger for absolute control.

He could still remember the pain of having Klaus thrust only a section of memories upon him, the jolt of lightning that seemed to have seared through his veins as the images had poured into his mind. He could recall watching all of his siblings double over in agony at the needed invasion of their heads to glimpse even part of what Klaus had experienced. They'd needed the proof. It'd been one thing to believe in gods, to grow up with witches and werewolves and be turned into monsters, but the notion that Niklaus was a god reborn had been a bit much to swallow.

Until they'd seen even a fraction of what Klaus had. Then it couldn't be so easily discounted and five hundred years later when Katerina had appeared any doubt had fallen away. Nothing had gone as planned though.

But they had all of the pieces again and this time it wasn't allowed to fail. Surely a thousand years was enough to make a reborn god wait to fulfill his destiny?

"Arriving late to the rendezvous with Nik isn't going to earn you any bonus points, 'Lijah," Kol called out from the driver's seat and Elijah sighed again.

Yes, he really would prefer dealing with Finn.

* * *

"Why doesn't anyone tell me anything?" Caroline grumbled as she followed Bonnie toward her locker. "You'd think being all thrust into the whole-" She paused lowering her voice a little as she looked around, making sure no one else was in ear shot. "- fang gang I'd be told when Elena gets  _kidnapped_."

"You were busy," Bonnie pointed out as she worked to unlock her locker.

Caroline shook her head, clearly she had heard that wrong. "I'm pretty sure I could have made time for that!"

"And done what?" Bonnie asked as she looked over at her finally before pulling out the books she needed.

"I don't know." Caroline shrugged helplessly as she shifted her bag to her other shoulder. "Helped somehow. Been back up to Stefan instead of it being Damon." Because Damon hanging around so just equaled more trouble for everyone. The familiar sensation of being watched trickled down her spine and she glanced around, trying to pinpoint who was observing them but couldn't find anyone looking their way in the busy hallway.

"They got it done." Bonnie spotted Jeremy heading their way. The last thing she wanted to do was talk about how her magical abilities were causing her some pain in front of Caroline. A few drops of blood from the strain of using magic was one thing, the whole ordeal with Jeremy the other day was another. Collapsing on the bed and him not being able to wake her for a while was something she knew Caroline would never let her hear the end of it. "We're going to meet after school at the boarding house, okay?"

"What about practice?" They seriously couldn't just blow that off. "There are only so many times that I can cover for you guys if you're not there."

"I think this is a bit more important than practice, Care," Bonnie pointed out and it was on the tip of Caroline's tongue to refute that. They could make it to Nationals this year. They had the routine, they had a group of girls who were giving it their all and were  _good_. But in comparison to the drama that was their lives that just wasn't as important.

"Of course. I'll meet you guys there after practice." Because maybe it had fallen to the wayside for Bonnie and Elena but it hadn't to Caroline. She needed the routine that cheerleading gave her, that bit of control that she could administer in a life that was perpetually spiraling further out of control with every passing second.

"I'll see you later," Bonnie assured her before hurrying away.

Caroline frowned at that, watching as Jeremy headed after Bonnie. Another discussion that she was apparently not part of. She sighed and turned to get head to class, the last thing she wanted was to show up late.

Tyler stepped into her way though and she stopped, looking expectantly at him. Their conversation the other day about him being a werewolf and her being a vampire might have ended better than she'd expected but she was still slightly worried that he'd push about knowing if there were more like her. That was the last thing he needed to know. She was pretty sure Damon might kill him then.

They really didn't need anymore death in Mystic Falls.

"Hey." He smiled awkwardly at her and she nodded back before offering her own lame hey back.

"I have to get to class," Caroline told him, trying to step around him.

"Can we meet after school? After your practice?" he asked and she didn't like the vulnerability she saw there in him, the frightened boy appearing out of the usually tough exterior.

"I can't today. I already made plans with Bonnie." He almost looked crestfallen. She remembered what it was like to wake up in that hospital room all alone and have no idea what was happening to her. Tyler and her might not have really been friends before but she couldn't let him go through his transition alone if she could help it. "But tomorrow I am so all yours to talk about...everything."

He perked up a little and she knew that was as good as it would get then. "I have to go." She nodded once again and hurried off, catching Matt's frown as she passed him, before she felt a chill run down her spine again.

Caroline stopped and glanced around, trying to pick up on what was causing it, but everything about the hallway looked completely normal. She couldn't shake the feeling of being watched though as she entered the classroom and took her seat. It took a moment but she shrugged the sensation off and created her perfectly crafted exterior to be on display again as Alaric started talking.

She kept her smile in place as she jotted down notes, wondering how many times she'd have to mentally tell herself that everything was fine before she even remotely began to believe that. With Elena having been kidnapped and Katherine locked in a tomb, the whole werewolf transition thing Tyler would be going through in a couple of weeks...and her own vampirism, Caroline was pretty sure that everything being fine wasn't exactly in the cards for any of them any longer.

But that didn't mean they'd have to be miserable for the rest of their lives, right?

Because hers was going to be an immortal one and she was not about to live it with gloom and doom hanging over her head every minute. What was the point in eternity if there wasn't happiness at least some of the time?

* * *

Klaus had the various files his team had put together on the doppelganger and her band of friends spread out before him on the hotel room's coffee table. He'd perused the others, making mental notes about each of them, jotting away who would be useful and who would most likely cause trouble. The Salvatore brothers would need to be dealt with, sooner rather than later. He'd seen the aftermath of what had happened between them in regards to Katherine. Klaus had no desire for their brand of heroics interfering with what needed to happen to this current girl.

He'd purposefully put Persephone's file off until last. If he read it first then he wouldn't have looked at the others, too engrossed in learning every little detail of his reborn beloved. But he'd combed through all of the information in the others and finally picked up hers, brushing his fingers over the photograph of her paperclipped to the front.

She had the same eyes, though they didn't hold the wisdom of the past and he didn't like the flecks of sadness he could make out in them even if she smiled beautifully. He'd remembered that look, seen it every time they had to say goodbye when so she could fulfill her duties for her mother. A carefully put together appearance even though leaving the Underworld had been something she was less inclined to do as the years went on.

Klaus opened the folder, stopping on her name.

"Caroline."

He enjoyed the way it rolled off his tongue, thought it worked well with this younger version, barely a blip in the world so far. He read through the information, memorizing every little detail from her elementary school accomplishments to her parents' names to her current class schedule. She was a busy little thing, a beauty queen in her own right while leading a number of charity organizations and being captain of the cheerleading squad.

He didn't approve of the small house she lived in with her mother, made notes to find something far more accommodating for her in the small town, considered the multitude of places he wanted to show her around the world, the foods she'd need to try, the art she'd need to see.

She was too close to the doppelganger though, too often with the girl who was surrounded by danger and that was something Klaus would need to fix soon. He couldn't risk the chance of her being accidentally harmed by someone before he could complete the transition and then unlock her memories.

He hadn't waited a thousand years to lose her now.

His gaze flicked to the Bennett witch file. She was Ayana's descendant, she should have the power to complete the spell to make Caroline an Original vampire like his family. Whether or not the other girl would survive the spell was another story but that hardly mattered to him. He'd have Caroline and he'd have his family, ones who followed  _him_  and not his loudmouthed little brother as had happened before.

There would be no enduring only the company of the dead for eternity. No, now the world was  _his_  and he meant to spend every moment enjoying it how he wished, conquering every last inch of it and laying it at Caroline's feet.

The sound of footsteps approaching the room, Kol's laughter echoing down the hallway had Klaus placing the file back on the table, photograph side face down. He beckoned to the man who was sitting half-dazed on the chair nearby, watching as he stumbled toward him, blood still trickling down his neck from his previous feeding.

He fell onto the couch beside him, arching it in his direction. Klaus sunk his fangs in, enjoying the sound of his blood pumping, the lingering fear as his compulsion forced him to give himself freely but allowed him to continue to feel afraid.

"What? Nothing for us to eat?" Kol tsked as he entered the suite with Elijah.

Klaus let go of the man, nudging him over toward where Kol stood rubbing his hands in anticipation. The smell of fear spiked in the room as Kol's fangs dropped, the gleeful smile he wore seeming to frighten the man more than anything else had.

"I hear you lost my doppelganger," Klaus looked over at Elijah who had stepped toward the table and was looking down at the scattering of files.

"I believe it was your paranoia about communicating by phones that caused that," Elijah told him as he sat down on another of the chairs, ignoring Kol's purposeful slurping noises as he fed. "Perhaps if you'd said something about locating one recently I wouldn't have bothered with Rose's inquiry."

Klaus waved him off. "You did what you were supposed to." If he hadn't known of the doppelganger's existence before Elijah's meeting with Rose would have indeed alerted him to it. "And where is Rosemarie and her traitorous little companion?"

"Trevor is dead." Elijah picked up one of the files and Klaus noted that it was the one about the elder Salvatore. The loose canon.

"He let Rosemarie go," Kol piped in before tearing into the man's neck again. He wouldn't last much longer.

"We made a deal," Elijah replied as he flicked through the file. "This one and  _that_  one," he nodded toward Stefan's file, "managed to get her away from me. Staked me to the wall. They think I'm dead."

"That will come in handy," Klaus mused. No doubt Rose would as well. She didn't know the inner workings of the Originals, only that they were older than any vampire she'd ever met before her. "We really must do something about this so-called honor you keep insisting on with adhering to the deals you make."

"We all have our quirks," Elijah placed the folder back down before looking over at Klaus again. "Rose will need to be dealt with, but not by my hand."

Klaus looked over at Kol who grinned a bloody smile as he dropped the dead man to the floor. "Death or compulsion?" He'd prefer the former but could make the latter entertaining enough.

"Compulsion for now," Klaus told him before glancing over at Elijah. "Where do you think she might be?"

"I'd wager Mystic Falls instead of heading across the ocean like she should be," his older brother murmured with a sigh. "Katherine is stuck in the tomb there with the moonstone."

"Well now, isn't that a lucky coincidence," Klaus smirked, enjoying the thought of that one trapped like the rat that she was.

"I'll go freshen up a bit and then deal with Rosemarie," Kol told them. It would probably be best to change out of clothes sticking with the man's blood.

Klaus waited until their younger brother was out of the room before picking up Caroline's file and turning it over for Elijah to see. He watched the realization dawn in his brother's eyes, the widening of them as his jaw dropped a bit in shock.

"You've found her," the surprise in Elijah's voice was palpable and Klaus picked up the file, staring down at the photograph that simply didn't do his love enough justice.

"She's friends with the doppelganger," Klaus informed him as he watched Elijah look at all of the files, putting the pieces together.

"Her name is Elena.".

"I don't care what her name is," Klaus replied. She'd be dead in a matter of weeks. Her name was of little consequence.

"She," Elijah started, nodding toward the file his brother held. "She is Elena's friend." Could his brother not see the consequences that would go along with that?"

Klaus simply shrugged. She'd have her memories and him, there would be no space for the likes of the doppelganger in her life when he was finished. Caroline could always make new friends, far better friends than children in a small town.

"I don't think she'll take kindly to you killing the girl, Niklaus," Elijah continued but Klaus stood and removed the small photo from the file.

He tucked it into his pocket. "She'll understand why I've done all I need to in time."

"Perhaps there's another way-"

The words were barely out of his mouth before Klaus tore Elijah out of the chair, hands wrapped around his brother's throat as he slammed him into the nearest wall. It cracked, paintings shaking, lights flickering from the impact.

"Last time you said that Katerina got away," Klaus reminded. Luckily Caroline hadn't existed yet then, the mistakes not causing him to lose her forever all over again. "I will not risk anything this time." Not with her alive and so close that it hurt to be even a few miles away from her, to know there was only an hours worth of driving between them and he could have her in his arms again.

Klaus' eyes darkened, the rage he felt barely contained, and Elijah knew better than to try and reason with his brother when he was like this. It was times like these that Elijah missed the boy Klaus had once been, the way they had all once been before the madness that was their lives had set in. But they had dealt with another kind of demon back then, one that Elijah wasn't so sure they would have escaped without all their mother had done.

If only Henrik hadn't been lost to spark the course of change.

"You'll need a werewolf," Elijah said instead, not having seen one of those in the smattering of files.

Klaus released him, smoothing down Elijah's usually impeccably placed tie. "Don't worry, brother. I have everything falling into place." A few changes had been made along the way, but nothing would stop his ritual from being completed at the next full moon.

* * *

"Well  _that_  was a complete waste of time," Caroline muttered as she left the Salvatore boarding house with Bonnie.

They had gone around in circles for hours, no one knowing where Rose was and Elena trying to convince everyone that she should talk to Katherine about the apparent ritual. It had been enough to give her a headache and she could see that Bonnie wasn't fairing much better. Thankfully no one was willing to budge the boulder blocking out Katherine from view in the tomb, not by magic and not by vampire strength.

Caroline knew Elena was put out that the two of them hadn't stood behind her in that regard but Katherine Pierce was a lying liar who lied and should  _never_ be trusted. It wouldn't surprise Caroline at all if Elena somehow did manage to talk to the vampire that Katherine would wind up outside of the tomb and Elena locked inside of it before the conversation was over. She was just that crafty.

"We need to find out what's going to happen though," Bonnie sighed in frustration. "If Grams were…she might know something. She'd at least be able to point me in the right direction."

"Maybe we should comb through her grimoire tomorrow after practice?" Caroline suggested, trying to come up with a solution. "Do you think your cousin would know? Lily?"

"Lucy," Bonnie replied though she looked a little chipper at the idea. "That's not a bad idea though. I'll call her when I get home."

Caroline could see Bonnie's house in the distance and the two of them said their goodbyes. She didn't move until she saw Bonnie make it through the door though, not about to chance anything happening to her friend with how crazy Mystic Falls had been lately. After all she'd been pronounced good as new in a hospital only to be smothered to death a few hours later.

Heading back toward her house she wondered if her mother would be home. Not that she was even sure if she wanted Liz there. So far her mother hadn't figured out the whole vampire thing with her again but Caroline knew she was walking a fine line with that and couldn't help but worry. It hadn't exactly gone over all that well at first last time.

She stopped walking though, familiar prickling sensation sliding up her back causing her to turn around, trying to find someone watching her. There was no one there though and she shook her head before hurrying off toward her house, wanting to get a bit of studying done before bed.

Kol watched her head off with a frown. Nik was not going to like what he'd just uncovered at all. It seemed that his brother's pretty little Persephone was a vampire. He fished out his phone and dialed the number as he slipped back among the shadows, quickly dialing Klaus' number. Finding Rose and dealing with her potential trouble had been an easy enough task, coming upon Caroline and the witch had been pure chance.

"What?" Klaus bit out in answer and Kol shook his head, thankful that he wouldn't be around to endure his brother's wrath.

"Guess who I came upon after leaving little Rosemarie?" He started silently counting off his fingers for Klaus to reply with an even further annoyed tone, smirking as his brother said his name in aggravation. "Your files seem to be missing the fact that your sweet little Persephone-"

" _Caroline_ ," Klaus corrected. "Her name is Caroline." Just as he was Klaus now, no longer Hades who endured the fates demands, she was Caroline. They were both renewed.

"Yes, her," Kol continued. "She's a vampire, Nik."

There was silence for a moment as the words registered in his brother's mind before Kol could hear furniture and glass being smashed about. He could hear his brother cursing, languages he'd not heard in years being thrown about as the destruction continued.

He waited for Klaus to come back to the phone. "Do not approach her, Kol," Klaus instructed, "But do whatever else you need to in order to find out who killed her."

"And once I do?" Kol asked, fingers itching with the possibilities.

"Don't start the torture without me," Klaus replied before hanging up.

Kol grinned down at his phone before pocketing it and continued on with a bit more bounce in his step.

 


	3. Chapter 3

_For you I'd burn the length and breadth of sky-_ Vienna Teng

* * *

"We're not getting anywhere," Caroline grumbled as she dropped back against the booth, sighing. "I feel like I've read the same phrase eighty times now and I'm not getting any new knowledge that can actually help us against this Klaus guy."

"At least we haven't caught a glimpse of him yet," Bonnie murmured, not looking up from grimoire she was pouring through. Lucy had sent her a few that had been in her family for generations as well as a few she'd found on her travels with Katherine. Her cousin wasn't sure if they would be helpful but it was better than the whole bunch of nothing that they'd come up with otherwise. "All we know is there has to be a full moon and Elena."

"It's the full moon today though," Caroline reminded, nodding toward the window.

It was still early afternoon but she couldn't forget the day. She was supposed to meet Tyler in a bit and help him try to deal with his first transition. It wasn't going to be easy. They'd seen that when they had watched the video of Mason's, saw Tyler's Uncle in agony as his bones broke slowly over the course of the night. Even fast forwarding it didn't make the savagery of what he'd gone through less brutal.

"And we still don't know how Katherine got out of the tomb or  _where_  she is. There should really be a witchy facebook group. It could totally be locked to just witches or whatever, but then at least you could post a picture of her and then be all  _warning_ , if you see this vampire do not ever help her."

Bonnie and Caroline had finally shown up with Elena to talk to her, desperate for answers that no one else was offer, and found the stone that had been placed in front of pushed aside and the spell broken. Katherine wouldn't have been able to do that but another witch could have. It wouldn't surprise Caroline at all to learn that there were more witches out there like Lucy, bound to do the doppelganger's bidding for one reason or another.

"We'll figure it out, Care," Bonnie promised. "Elena isn't going to die for a stupid sun and moon curse."

"I don't even get the point of that anyway. It's not like vampires can't just get a daylight ring to walk around in the sun with," she muttered, glancing at the one she sported thanks to the witch across from her. "I guess it'd make sense for werewolves to want to break it because...it just looks brutal." Though they  _did_  have to kill someone in order to even activate it so  _maybe_  the pain was kind of deserved. Except she remembered Tyler and how it had been accident orchestrated by Katherine so maybe not all of them deserved to endure that pain.

"And I guess not every vampire is lucky enough to have a witch best friend." She looked back at Bonnie then. They were still that right? Even if their relationship was still entirely too tentative for her taste.

Bonnie looked up from the book and offered a small smile before looking back down. "I just hate all the not knowing," Caroline continued. "You'd think Damon and Stefan would be a little more knowledgeable with how old they are." What had those two even been doing for the last hundred odd years to not have any idea about the damn Originals anyway? Because Rose had known about them and Caroline had a feeling that Katherine did too, but the Salvatores were clueless. It was ridiculous.

She really needed new vampire teachers. Those two were so not cutting it anymore.

Caroline looked back down at the book in front of her and sighed. "I say we check the historical society building," she started after a few minutes. "I know that my family and Elena's family have all donated stuff there. Maybe yours has too and whatever they have will hold some kind of answer?"

Because what they were doing was simply not working.

"I think my dad has mentioned a few things that have gone there over time." Bonnie shut her book and started gathering up the rest of her things. Caroline quickly followed suit. "And I don't know about you but I don't think I can read another word right now."

"Even speed reading through all of that was aggravating," Caroline told her as they slid out of the booths. It was a handy little vampire trick but she'd much prefer to use it for a good romance novel than another witch's grimoire. "No offence but I am so glad I'm not a witch."

Bonnie arched a brow at her as they headed out of the Grill and into the daylight. "Well if it was that or a vampire…" her voice trailed off and Caroline shrugged noncommittally.

She still didn't think she'd want to be a witch but Caroline knew that saying she'd rather be a vampire probably wouldn't go over all that well with her friend and she didn't want to rock the already fragile repairing of their friendship.

Instead she started toward her parked car, popping the trunk so that they could put the books in the back.

Pain reverberated through her head as she went to close the trunk though and Caroline grabbed her head, working to breathe as she tried to determine where it was coming from. "Stop doing that to her," Bonnie demanded and Caroline followed her friend's eyeline to the young black woman standing a few feet away from them.

She twisted her hand and the pain intensified, sending Caroline to her knees as Bonnie moved to react, not seeing the man move in from behind. Caroline tried to lash out, to protect the two of them, but the pain was too much and she felt a needle stab into her back a second later, vervain shooting through her veins and knocking her out.

* * *

Everything was  _perfect._

Caroline was safely tucked far out of harm's way, the Bennett witch along with her so that she wouldn't be able to cause trouble. Elijah had already secured the younger Salvatore boy and while the elder one was still missing, Klaus' sources said he was heading into a rather nasty trap that he'd already put in place for the boy.

Getting Caroline and her witch friend out of the way had managed to serve two purposes when he'd had the Lockwood pup taken as well. Klaus had known it would look like they were to be the ones to be used in the ritual-the vampire and werewolf that he'd need to unlock his curse. But that was much too obvious and he'd had multiple pairs to choose from. He was ecstatic that the two he wanted were going to be the ones sacrificed.

Greta had already secured the doppelganger into her place in the clearing. A circle of fire surrounded the girl and he watched as the wolf he'd chosen from the pack who'd tried to hurt Caroline only a few weeks before was thrust into another fiery circle before Elijah pulled the vampire he'd wanted most of all for this ritual into place.

"Don't let him do this," Katherine protested as the fire flew up around her, locking her in. Her pleading looks were useless and Klaus could see the hope drain from her as Elijah stepped away, turning his back to her once again.

A slow smirk spread across Klaus' face as he made his way toward her, enjoying the hatred in her eyes. "You could have lived another hundred years running from me, Katerina. But you chose the wrong pieces in the game you decided to play."

It hadn't taken long for Kol to find out that  _she_  had been the one to murder Caroline, killed the girl with a pillow while she was recovering in the hospital. That knowledge had quickly sealed her fate. As much fun as torturing her had been in the last few weeks it was time for her to finally complete the role she'd always been destined for.

Katherine had cheated him of unlocking this curse once, she wasn't about to do the same again.

"Please," Elena begged, tears falling freely down her cheeks as she shook her head. "I don't want to die."

She almost looked the definition of innocence in that moment. But all Klaus saw when he looked at her was another Katherine and his smile turned cold as he looked her over. "We all make sacrifices," he simply told her before nodding at Greta to begin.

"Are you certain about this, Niklaus? The girl...she is her friend," Elijah reminded but Klaus simply glared at him, not wanting to hear another word.

Nothing and no one would stop him now.

* * *

Caroline woke in a beautifully decorated room, tucked into a large bed with sheets that had the kind of thread count she'd only ever dreamed of. She pushed herself up, looking around the place, confused by all she was seeing. She'd only ever seen the kind of furniture and paintings that surrounded her in photographs of celebrity houses or maybe websites for hotels that she'd never actually be able to afford.

The picture perfect setting didn't mesh at all with what she remembered happening last. Why would she be abducted only to end up  _here_ , in a room built for royalty or something close to that?

And where was Bonnie? Had they left her behind, the couple that had taken her and was no where to be seen? Caroline took a deep breath and worked to center herself. She was a vampire now and that meant her senses were far beyond what they would have been as a human, especially her hearing.

She focused on the area nearby, trying to pick up on who or what might be in the place with her. Her gaze flicked to the door to her right as she heard someone breathing and the telltale beat of a human heart as water ran. Slipping out of the bed, she focused on the other areas, picking up another human heart beat and several others that weren't quite right. Too fast or too slow.

Quietly she crept toward the door, wanting to get the upperhand on whoever was behind it. If they were a witch they'd be able to knock her down if they saw her coming. She needed to make sure that this person didn't. Caroline froze though when she picked up the familiar scent of Bonnie's shampoo and reeled in her monster that had been drifting far too close to the surface as her friend opened the door and stepped out.

"You're awake,," Bonnie murmured as she stepped forward, quickly wrapping her into a hug.

Caroline hugged her back, as gently as she could, not wanting to send Bonnie moving away because she showed her true strength. "I didn't know how long you'd be knocked out. The room is spelled. I've been trying to break it but it's not budging just yet," Bonnie continued as they pulled apart.

"This doesn't make sense," Caroline motioned around the room, at the crystal chandelier hanging in the middle to the beautifully carved white vanity tucked away in the corner. Was that a bottle of her favorite perfume? "Can you try another spell?"

Because getting out of the room was a definite priority. They didn't know who had them but as lovely as the setting was they couldn't possibly be there for anything good. She watched as Bonnie focused on the door, murmuring words in Latin that Caroline didn't understand.

Blood started to trickle from Bonnie's nose though and she flashed in front of her friend. "Stop," Caroline urged, frantic as Bonnie began to tense up, the magic too much of a strain. " _Stop._ " She shook her, breaking Bonnie's concentration and thankfully snapped her out of the trance she'd been falling into.

"I can't…" Bonnie struggled to get out, the attempt having weakened her considerably.

Caroline nodded, running her hands soothingly up her friend's arm, trying to offer some comfort. "It's okay. We'll figure this out and get out of here another way."

She walked to the door and ripped it off its hinges but wasn't able to get into the hall, an invisible barrier preventing their escape. She kept looking around and headed over to the windows. Maybe? It was a slim possibility but maybe whoever had trapped them in there wouldn't have considered the windows to be a viable option because of the height.

She expected her hand to touch a barrier again after opening them, but there was nothing there and she dangled her hand out of the window for a second, enjoying the bit of freedom. "We're gonna need to squeeze out onto the little landing and then you're going to need to hold on tight while I get us down, okay? Can you handle that?"

Because Bonnie still didn't look all that well but Caroline wasn't about to leave her behind. "I have to," Bonnie murmured as she let Caroline help her get through the window.

It took them a few minutes but eventually they were down on the ground, ducking behind the large hydrangea bushes that were tucked against the house. "Okay, we're gonna run as fast as far away from here as possible and then we'll figure out our bearings." They just needed to get  _away._

"You'll be faster on your own," Bonnie pointed out as they quietly slipped away from the house and down the long winding driveway that wasn't well lit.

"I'm not leaving you." Nothing good ever came of separating. Hadn't they learned that by now? She wasn't sure flashing them away was a good idea with how fragile Bonnie looked. So instead Caroline grasped Bonnie's hand as they continued along, wanting the option available in case something went wrong. She kept her hearing alert, listening to the heartbeats back at the house as they got closer to the wrought iron gate up ahead.

The sound of a wolf howling in the distance had her freezing for a moment, muscles tightening as the sound of a few others echoed after the first, nearer than she'd have liked. "We're almost there."

A bloody, mangled body lay in their path though, causing the girls to stop as they realized who it was that had been so savagely torn into. Werewolf bites weren't supposed to kill this quickly, but their teeth had ripped apart flesh and bone and that mixed with their deadly venom seemed to be preventing the healing that should have been happening to Damon Salvatore who lay gasping for breath, face contorted in pain before them.

Should they try and help him out as well? How would they look at Stefan if they left behind to die? Not to mention if Damon didn't die he would so kill them for leaving him stranded there. Caroline shared a look with Bonnie before they moved to try and get him up.

Caroline was knocked off her feet before she could touch him though, a large wolf slamming into her and she struggled to keep his snapping jaws at bay. This was an all too familiar a situation and last time she'd had Stefan to help her get out of it. She heard Bonnie muttering a spell and the wolf was flung off of her.

She jumped to her feet and rescuing Damon was all but forgotten as Caroline moved to snatch Bonnie and get them as far away as she possibly could as quickly as she could. But another wolf leapt at her, claws sliced into her back as teeth ripped open her shoulder.

Caroline screamed, Bonnie's cries twisting in the wind with her own as she managed to get the wolf off Caroline again. But the damage was done. "No, oh god, no, Caroline," Bonnie was whispering and Caroline shook her head, not wanting to believe it.

She wasn't supposed to die like this.

What was the point of dying in a hospital room and being turned immortal to only die a few weeks later? Where was the fairness in that? What was she going to tell her mom? She hadn't even been able to let her know about being a vampire yet and now she was going to become rabid and die a second time.

The wolf leapt at her again and Caroline twisted to throw it off but the beast was wrenched back, heart torn out before being tossed to the side. The other wolf met the same fate seconds after. Caroline and Bonnie stared at the young man who stood before them, wiping the blood off his hands.

"You couldn't bloody well stay in the room? It's not like we had you locked up in a dungeon. Were the sheets not quite to your liking?" Kol muttered before his gaze fell to her clearly bitten shoulder. "Oh hell. Nik is going to kill me for this."

They stared at him for a long moment before looking at one another, not sure what to say to that. Kol picked Caroline up, his grip tight, before cocking his head at Bonnie. "I suggest you come along as well, little witch. There's no sign of civilization around for miles," Kol told her as he started back towards the house, not loosening his grip on Caroline. "And stop your squirming. It's your fault you're in this damn mess in the first place."

"What about Damon?" Bonnie asked as she caught up to them, nodding back to the dying vampire.

"Nik's pet wolves need a snack," Kol shrugged and continued on.

Bonnie glanced back at Damon but the sound of a howl nearby had her hurrying after Kol and leaving the other vampire behind.

* * *

The desire to run freely in his wolf form was nearly overwhelming, the freedom represented something Klaus hadn't quite expected, but there were far more important matters to see to. He could always transform again whenever he wanted, not one bound to the moon, after he'd ensured that Caroline's memories of her past were unlocked and he had his Persephone back with him.

He moved through the wrought iron gate and found the wolves in his employ feasting on the Salvatore boy who'd fallen so easily for his trap. Klaus nipped at the heels of them, enjoying the way they bowed their heads to him, clearly sensing his superiority before he headed off toward the house.

Transforming back into human form was painful, but nothing compared to the agony he'd suffered for a thousand years without his queen by his side. Klaus cracked his neck as he walked up the steps, finding the clothes he'd requested set on the step and quickly changed into them. He didn't think Caroline would appreciate him being naked for their official first meeting.

Once his necklaces were tucked into place he happily strode through the front door, arching a brow at Elijah and Kol's somber looks. Klaus extended his arms, power seeming to ripple through him. He might not have been a god anymore but he was far closer to one than any other being on the planet. As an Original vampire he'd thought he had known what it meant to be the strongest but  _now_  he far surpassed his siblings.

"It was unlike anything I've dreamed of," Klaus told them as he clasped his hands together. "Pity you won't be able to experience it." He glanced toward the window staircase that led to the second floor where Caroline would be waiting for him. "Has she woken yet?"

The vervain injection had been necessary, the only way to knock her out so Maddox and Greta could retrieve her. "About that," Elijah began while Kol looked twitchy.

Nothing ever good came from his younger brother looking like that.

Klaus narrowed his eyes, finally taking note of Maddox who was off to the side, looking at the floor, his shoulders sagging in contrition. "What happened?" Klaus demanded as he looked between the three, wanting to know what had the witch drenched in fear.

"They got out," Kol started and Klaus snapped his gaze to him. "Your boy here thought spelling the bloody window was all that was needed. I suppose expecting the girls to jump out of the window was a bit of a leap. They nearly made it the gate and then the wolves got them."

Maddox's heart was on the floor before Kol had finished his recount, Klaus' rage uncontainable. "She was only bit once before I realized what was going on," Kol continued. "Having those damn pets of yours around might not have been the best course of action."

Elijah stepped in front of Kol, blocking Klaus' attempt to get at him. There wouldn't be much Klaus could do without the daggers which Elijah had already hidden away as soon as he'd arrived home. "I do not think that this is how you want her to first glimpse you, is it?" Elijah asked and Klaus stepped back at that. His brother had a point. "She is in pain and well aware of what a werewolf bite does to a vampire."

Klaus glanced toward the stairs again and he could only imagine the thoughts she was having, the belief she'd be experiencing a horrible death that would leave her hallucinating until the bitter end. "I will deal with you later," Klaus muttered as he looked around at Kol, further annoyed when his brother simply shrugged, not at all worried by that statement.

Kol had always been the difficult one.

Klaus headed up the stairs, Elijah close on his heels. "The witch is with her," he told him as they neared the room.

"Your presence is not required, Elijah. I'm sure I can handle a newbie witch. Send one of the staff for me to use in a demonstration," Klaus told him as they stopped at the doorway that was no longer spelled, the door laying on the other side.

He stepped across the threshold and clasped his hands behind his back as he looked over at Caroline sitting on the bed with Bonnie. She was leaning against her friend, holding hands as they murmured to one another, stopping when they spotted him. Caroline sat up a little straighter at his presence, the witch readying to try and incapacitate him.

"I am not here to harm either of you." Though he would kill the witch if he needed to.

"Says the guy who had us kidnapped," Caroline scoffed as she held Bonnie's hand a little tighter. Why were all the crazy psychos the hot ones? It had to be part of deals made with the devil. Instant hotness for an eternity of evil deeds. "Sorry but we tend not to believe the ones who abduct us."

Bonnie squeezed her hand, willing her friend to not antagonize the guy that they didn't know. "Who are you anyway?" She had her suspicions but the other guy had referred to him as Nik and as far as Bonnie knew there wasn't any Nik in the whole ritual debacle.

"Niklaus Mikaelson," Klaus grinned as he watched them glance confusedly at one another. "But most tend to call me  _Klaus_." His smile was all teeth as he stepped nearer to them, watching the realization dawn in their eyes.

"If you hurt Elena," Bonnie started and Klaus simply shrugged.

"What's done is done." There would be no changing that now. "But I hear that someone has had a nasty encounter with a werewolf." He turned his attention to Caroline.

She was right there, so close to touch. He could smell the hint of lavender from the lotion she'd used that day. Would she taste the same as Persephone? Would she gasp the way that goddess had when he scraped teeth down her neck or stroked her just so? He had so many questions, so many things he wanted to try in regards to her, but mostly Klaus simply wanted to hold her in his arms again. He wanted to feel her touch against his scalp, along his back as he squeezed her tight, never wanting to let go.

But she was glaring at him in a way that reminded him of when Persephone had first come to the Underworld, that hatred of being abducted had run deep, creating a barrier between the two of them for quite some time before he'd thawed her almost icy exterior.

"Yeah, lovely little perimeter guard that you've got here," Caroline bit out, pushing her anger to the forefront but he caught the whiff of vulnerability in that statement.

Klaus cocked his head to the side as one of the kitchen staff appeared, a vampire that his sister had made along the way some years back. "Eloise here is a vampire," he explained, waving for the woman to walk forward.

Klaus took hold of her arm and brought it to his mouth, savagely biting down into it. The girl cried out in pain as he pulled away and showed the nasty wound on her arm. "Interesting." He watched the wound for a minute, waiting for it to heal. This one didn't and Eloise seemed much worse off than any he'd seen bitten by a werewolf before, already sagging against him. Klaus glanced over at Caroline again. "Yours has already disappeared, a little false sense of security to make you think all is well. But you know better."

He bit into his own wrist and shoved the blood down Eloise's throat, making sure the two continued to see her arm. The wound healed, the vampire was as good as new. "My blood is the cure." It was hard not to look smug about that fact. He released the vampire's arm. "You can go now. Oh, Eloise, take the witch with you."

The vampire was across the room and then out of it with Bonnie before Caroline could blink. "Your friend will be fine, Caroline."

Her name should not sound like a damn caress when he said it. That was just not fair. "Yeah, sorry, I'm so not going to take your word for that." After all she was pretty sure this guy had killed Elena. And she was pretty sure it wasn't because of some stupid sun and moon curse. He'd called himself a hybrid and she wasn't sure what he even meant by that at first, but she'd noted his fangs and the golden eyes. Vampire  _and_  a werewolf. That really couldn't be good.

"She'll be free to see you again once we've had a little chat," Klaus told her as he sat down on the edge of the bed, not liking how she scooted toward the other side of it.

"I'm not really in a talkative mood. My friends dying, myself dying puts a whole damper on wanting to do the whole conversation thing." Her words fell so easily from her mouth when she knew she should be reeling them in. But she was already on her way to death's door. What was the point of not saying what she wanted?

She didn't like his smile or rather, she didn't like that she  _did_  like his smile, how that curve of his lips seemed to call to her or how her fingers were aching to smooth through his curls. So she kept her lips pressed together and her eyes narrowed, a deliberate distance between them.

"Do you want to die, Caroline?" Klaus asked and he could see the truth of that answer in her eyes, in the way her breath caught for a second before she resumed her annoyed stance. "Do you want this to be one of your last days on earth? To never see anything outside of this tiny town or experience anything beyond this small bit of time that you've known?"

He knew she didn't want this to be the end, could see that desire to fight for life in her, but he could also see that stubborn streak he'd heard so much about, the one that reminded him of Persephone and how she'd ignored him for days on end at first. He would force his blood down her throat if necessary but Klaus wanted it to be her choice to accept it.

"I don't want to die," she finally murmured after what seemed like an eternity to them both. "But I don't understand why you want me to have this cure." She didn't understand why Klaus had abducted her and Bonnie and put them in this lovely room. The one that had her favorite perfume and she was pretty sure she'd spotted a few of her favorite bathroom brands as well earlier. It didn't add up with anything else that they knew about him. Which admittedly wasn't a lot but it was enough for these new pieces to not make sense.

Klaus rolled up his sleeve. "You'll understand in time," he told her before he reached out to tug her over to him.

She came without a fight, her fangs already slipping out, and she sank them into his arm once she was situated against him. He had her back pressed against his chest, hand sliding through her hair as she drank, body relaxing against him for a few moments. And then he felt her tense up, her bite deepening as the memories began to slam into her.

Caroline didn't know what was happening as one after another the images played out in her head. There was another woman who she called mother and believed it with all her heart, flowers blooming underneath her feet as she danced through a field, enjoying the sun against her skin. And then there was Klaus except he wasn't Klaus, he was Hades and that didn't make sense and it did all at once.

Klaus kissed the top of her head as he cradled her against him, enjoying the scent of hers, the way her body fit with his was so familiar, something he'd missed for far too long. It was a short lived reprieve though, Caroline out of his arms and pressed against the wall moments later.

"What did you do me?" she demanded, clenching her hands to her head as the images continued to bombard her, emotions stirring inside of her that contradicted everything she knew to be true.

Abduction, hatred, friendship, love. It all played out but it wasn't like watching a movie, it was more remembering something that she hadn't thought about in a while and suddenly there it was again, clear as day. Happiness filled her life and then there was nothing but darkness as her light was put out, soul aching for the god she loved even as she became star dust.

Klaus flashed to stand in front of her, tried to touch her hands, to draw them from her head but she pushed at him. "Get  _away from me_."

"Sweetheart, just breathe and let them come back to you," Klaus told her as he finally caught hold of her hands.

Her breathing was ragged, body entirely too tense for his liking. "What is this? What kind of trick are you playing?" Because it had to be one. Gods didn't exist. She wasn't one or whatever all of this implied.

"It's not a trick, Caroline," Klaus tried to keep his voice soothing, to reel in his anger when she snatched her hands away and pressed herself into the corner, eyes blazing as she stared at him.

"I don't believe you."

 


	4. Chapter 4

_Memories are like bullets._  
_Some whiz by and leave you spooked._  
_Others tear you open and leave you in pieces._   
**Richard Kadrey**

* * *

The hurt that flashed through his eyes tugged at Caroline's soul, part of her yearning to smooth it away, but she kept her back pressed into the corner of the room, hands clenched tightly into fists to stave off the response she wasn't about to allow herself to give. The onslaught of images had abated but they were all still there, waiting to be looked into, to slip into the forefront of her mind when she least expected it.

She was trying to figure out  _why_ he would even do this to her. In what way would making her think she was some reborn goddess help him out? She couldn't figure out his agenda and that alone was terrifying for her. Everyone had one, hadn't she learned that by then? And this was  _Klaus_. She'd heard Damon and Stefan's recounting what Rose had told them, had been drenched in the terror that he managed to invoke by having them wondering when he would show up.

He'd killed Elena.

Elena who she'd known since she was a baby and he'd sacrificed her for a curse that wasn't making sense anymore either. He'd had her and Bonnie brought to this house and spelled into a room and she didn't understand  _why_. Was it all for these...she didn't want to think of them as memories. That meant they were real and Caroline refused to think of them that way.

They were a trick.

She just didn't understand what the point of the trick was.

"I couldn't live without you for an eternity," Klaus tried to explain but she shook her head at that, not able to believe those words. "Hecate did all she could to ensure you'd be reborn."

"Hecate isn't real.  _Wasn't_ real.  _None_ of this is real," Caroline bit out, nails digging into her palms to try and ground her. "This is just...it's not real. Gods and goddesses don't exist." Though she had thought the same about monsters at one point too and look at how that had turned out. "I don't know what game you're playing but you're playing one." Because that's what monsters did. Hadn't she seen that with Damon? "I'm not her."

It didn't matter if she could  _remember_  playing in the fields like it was yesterday, could feel the daisies tickling her toes as they sprung up under her feet as she moved about. Memories were easily tampered with, hadn't Damon taken hers away and put other ones in place to keep her docile and under his control? That's all this was, though it was much more elaborate than anything she'd experienced before.

"Caroline." Klaus reached out to touch her knee but she flinched and he yanked his hand back. The panic he'd seen and smelled as he'd gotten closer twisted in his gut. To say this wasn't going at all how he'd envisioned was an understatement.

"I'm not her," she murmured again and closed her eyes, trying to ignore the memories flitting about of her smiling as he showed her around a dark palace, her hand reaching out to entwine with his. Her nails dug in deeper to her palms, slicing into her skin but she relished the pain, needed it to pull her out of the memory that she was getting lost in.

"I'm not her. I'm not her." She pressed her hands to her ears, willed the recollections to cease, especially when she longed for those arms to wrap around her and comfort her like they used to but that was not allowed to happen. She wasn't going to fall for this trick, no matter how much her body ached to reach out to him.

Klaus hesitated for a moment before trying to pull her into his arms but she was across the room in a flash, refusing to accept any sort of comfort from him. He ached to hold her, been denied the opportunity too long for his liking and here she was in need of his touch yet refusing it. He flexed his hands at his sides, stifling the urge to follow her across the room, to force her to accept his embrace. He wanted her to come to him willingly, because she wanted to be with him, not because he made her. He'd foolishly thought once her memories were restored she'd understand it all and they would be reunited, fall back into the love they'd shared, that he felt in his bones for her.

But she was fighting against what her heart knew to be true and it rankled him to see her hurting in this way, to watch her tear herself apart instead of simply giving into it all. But his Persephone had always been a fighter, he really should have expected Caroline to be one as well.

"Sweetheart," Klaus started again as he took a tentative step forward.

"I'm not your sweetheart. I'm not your anything." Her words tore into him but it was Caroline's fear that he could practically taste that Klaus despised the most. "I want you to leave me alone," she told him, gaze darting about for where she could go next if he didn't leave. She wasn't sure she'd be able to make it out the window before he caught her. Plus she couldn't leave Bonnie behind.

He nearly yelled at her then, nearly moved forward to shake some sense into her. He was  _never_  leaving her again. He had lost her once, that would not happen a second time. Clearly though this conversation wasn't helping and Klaus didn't want to make it worse. His anger was barely contained and he knew he might lash out at her any moment if he continued to push and she continued to reject his advances. For a thousand years he had plotted and waited for her to appear and  _this_  was how she repaid him?

Then again Persephone had done the same when he offered her the Underworld, practically laid it at her feet for the taking, and she'd rejected him, wanting to return to the world she'd known. Was it really surprising that she'd do the same now when her world was suddenly thrust into change no one could ever anticipate coming? That knowledge didn't really lessen his anger though, her continued rejection cutting him deeply.

Perhaps it would be good to give Caroline some time to calm down and let the memories settle. He needed to come up with a new game plan because he was not about to wait as long as he had the first time around for her to fall for him again.

"I'll have Bonnie sent back to you," Klaus told her, noting her relief at that, though she still watched him warily, looking ready to flash to the other side of the room again if he approached her. "I suggest you don't try to run though, Caroline. It'd be such a pity for your friend to find out what being burned alive feels like."

He was out of the room before she could respond but he heard her horrified gasp and ignored the way that twisted in his gut as he headed down the hallway, looking for someone to take his rage out on.

* * *

Bonnie had been pacing the room she'd been practically tossed into for what seemed like hours but was only a number of minutes. The damn thing was spelled just as the other had been and she tried to push against it, to break the handiwork of this one, but all she ended up with was a headache and more blood to wipe away from her nose. She didn't understand what she was doing wrong, why doing magic was draining her like it did.

It'd only done that to her Grams when she did a spell entirely too strenuous to take on. But these simple ones that Bonnie had done over the last few weeks shouldn't have hurt her like they were. At least that's what she thought. It wasn't like Lucy was picking up her phone nor did she know anyone else to ask about any of it.

"You're doing it wrong," a voice echoed from behind her, on the other side of the barrier.

She turned, spotted Kol, and turned back away from him. Bonnie had no interest in talking to a vampire. Especially not one who worked for Klaus. "You're drawing from your own energy," Kol continued. "That'll burn you out quickly. Didn't anyone bother to teach you that, little witch?"

Bonnie didn't answer, continued to pretend that he wasn't there as she tried to pick up on anything that she might be able to hear. Human hearing only extended so far though and she couldn't say for certain what was happening outside of the four walls she was secured inside. It made her worry for Caroline who was alone with the monster.

She had already lost one friend. Bonnie really didn't want to lose another.

"Not a talkative one?" Kol mused and Bonnie felt the air around her shift. "It was always a toss up with your little line who would and wouldn't be."

Curiosity tugged at her, wanting to know what he meant by that, wanting to know precisely how many of her ancestors he might have known. But she pushed it down. Lucy had been right in saying that vampires somehow managed to pull witches into everything every time. Her Grams had died because they'd broke the sealing spell to release Damon and Stefan from the tomb. And hadn't she been used numerous times by Damon to get whatever he needed done?

She wasn't about to play that game with another.

"Where's Caroline?" Bonnie demanded instead.

"You're in luck. Nik wants me to bring you back up to her. Seems this little reunion isn't going quite how he expected it to," Kol remarked, amused by the outcome.

Reunion? That didn't make sense. Caroline didn't know Klaus. At least Bonnie didn't think that she did. Doubt was a powerful emotion and it started to twist in her veins. She tried to stifle it, reminding herself that this could be part of whatever game was currently being played by these vampires that they didn't know aside from a few second hand rumors.

She followed Kol out of the room and back up the stairs to the doorway to the room she'd last seen her friend in. "Let me know if you're ever interested in finding out precisely what you can do with these gifts of yours, little Bennett witch," Kol mused before flashing from the hall.

Bonnie snorted at that. Like that would ever happen. She just needed to find some actual witches to talk to and learn from. How she would go about doing that was a mystery to uncover at some other time. Right now she needed to focus on Caroline.

"Care?" she asked as she walked in, confusedly looking around when she didn't spot her friend in the bed. Bonnie located her instead pressed into a corner of a room, staring blankly at her hands and quietly murmuring to herself. "Caroline?"

What the hell had Klaus done to her?

Bonnie hesitated for a moment, doubt still niggling in the back of her mind as she looked at Caroline. Things were still a little tense between them, reconciling the fact that her friend was a vampire still difficult to do, but seeing Caroline look as vulnerable as she was in that moment finally spurred Bonnie to move to her friend's side and kneel down in front of her. She slowly took hold of Caroline's hands and squeezed them gently.

"Care?" she tried again, thankful when Caroline looked up. "What did he do? Did he not heal you?"

"He healed me." Caroline thought so at least. She'd drank his blood so that meant she was healed, right? "He just…" She took a deep breath, trying to figure out how to explain anything that had happened since Bonnie had been forced out of the room.

She didn't want these new memories, this longing that was etched into her skin, burned into her bones for a monster who had killed their best friend and others. She wanted to scrub it away but Caroline didn't think that would do any good. But she knew she didn't want Bonnie to look at her like she had before, like she was a monster. They were slowly getting back to being actual friends again and she didn't want to lose her.

"What happened?" Bonnie urged and Caroline shook her head, tried to reel in the emotions that were spilling from her. They wouldn't stop pouring out though but she kept the words inside, not trusting herself to let them out. Instead she let Bonnie pull her close, thankful for the hug that her friend freely gave her, and made sure not to hug her back too tightly.

Bonnie frowned as she squeezed Caroline tightly. The last time she'd seen her friend cry like this had been when Bill Forbes had left Mystic Falls and Caroline had known her family would never be the same. Bonnie didn't know what had happened and Kol's words might still be ringing in her head, spreading little waves of doubt, but she held tighter onto Caroline, determined that the monster wasn't going to get another of her friends.

* * *

The kitchen was a mess by the time Elijah made it inside. Blood splattered the walls, the counters and nearly every appliance. Hearts and heads were scattered along the floor, bodies dropped in different areas, the stench of death and aroma of fear nearly overwhelming as he took in the scene. His brother sat on the counter, tearing savagely into the last of the help and Elijah let out a sigh at the sight of him.

Good help was so hard to find at times. Especially ones that could keep up to the standard that his family was accustomed to over the years. Now they'd need to retrain a new batch of workers and start looking for a new chef who was up to par.

Elijah spotted Eloise and pinched the bridge of his nose before clearing his throat to get Klaus' attention. Rebekah was not going to be pleased that Niklaus had killed one of her favorites. "I take it that this outburst is because everything isn't going quite as smoothly as you hoped."

His brother had never been good at handling his anger when situations didn't turn out precisely how he wanted them. Lashing out was a staple of Klaus' repertoire.

Klaus dropped the body, satisfied that he'd drained every last inch of blood from the body, and tore the man's head off before he hit the ground. His anger was hardly abated but the urge to shake some sense into Caroline, to force her to accept the memories she was trying so hard to avoid had lessened a bit. Enough to give her some more time with her annoying witch friend.

"A minor hiccup." Klaus grabbed one of the kitchen towels and wiped the blood from his chin.

"She knows you as only her enemy," Elijah told him as he stepped over a body, wrinkling his nose in disgust. "You killed her friend, abducted her and another, and now suddenly she has images thrust upon her that would make little sense to a girl born in this day and age. Gods and goddesses, witchcraft, wolves were all standard for us. We grew up in a time when they were a living breathing part of our existence. We witnessed the power of magic since we took our first breath, Niklaus, and still finding out you were a god reborn was hard to believe until you shared the memories." And then well, it hadn't been all that hard to accept considering their mother had made them a type of god with the immortality spell.

Klaus pressed his lips together at that, not liking Elijah's rational explanation, especially not when it made sense and meant that convincing Caroline of everything would be more difficult than he'd originally planned. "Gods and goddesses are myths now, your own research into Mystic Falls and Caroline has shown that her group of friends have only known about the supernatural for less than a year. Wrapping her head around everything will not be as easy as it was for you," Elijah continued.

To know he was Hades had been a gift for Klaus, a way to further distance himself from Mikael and the horror he'd experienced under that man's hand. It had added to the power he'd never experienced before and relished in for a thousand years. It had led him to  _her_ , but even with that he'd had a thousand years of memories to explore, adding to the pain of missing her, wanting her.

"She'll accept it in time," Klaus replied, confident in that.

The problem was how long it might take Caroline to accept this new part of her, this melding of the old with the new. He wasn't going to wait,  _couldn't_  now that he had gotten a taste for what it was like to have her in his arms. He wouldn't be denied her touch for longer than necessary. He simply needed to figure out how to stack the deck in his favor to speed things along and have her understand it all and accept him.

Turning her into an Original vampire was also off the table and that meant he needed to come up with a new way to protect her. The wolves had almost killed her, a simple stake to the heart would end her life entirely too quickly and that would not do for the eternity he had planned for the two of them.

"I'm not certain that kidnapping her and isolating her is the way to go this time," Elijah replied and Klaus hated that his brother was right about that.

Klaus would do so if necessary though, if all else failed. It had worked once, it should work again. But that had taken months on end and he'd dealt with her silence, her sorrow during those agonizing weeks. He had no intention of doing so again.

The wheels in his head were already turning, taking in what he'd learned about Caroline Forbes over the last few weeks, who and what mattered to her, and he smiled at Elijah as a new plan began to take root. "I believe you need to start vetting out new staff, brother." He pushed himself off of the counter and patted Elijah's shoulder as he passed. "I'm thinking a chef who specializes in French food would be nice for a few weeks."

Elijah watched him go, no idea what was going through Klaus' mind as he regarded the destruction left behind. When would he stop being the one to clean up his brother's messes?

* * *

It took some time but Caroline eventually got her breathing regulated and at least outwardly looked like her emotions were all tightly locked away. Inside she was still a mess, the memories threatening to cause another eruption of feelings she didn't want to acknowledge, but at least she looked calmer.

"Do you have any idea why he brought us here?" Bonnie asked and Caroline pulled away from her friend, cautiously scrutinizing her, trying to figure out what was going through the witch's mind.

Lying would break the tenuous trust that Caroline had been building up with her again, but she didn't know how to explain what all had happened either. Plus Caroline was terrified that the knowledge that Klaus apparently wanted her would have Bonnie turning her back on her once again, leaving her without anyone in her corner. "I don't think we'll ever understand why Klaus does anything," Caroline finally murmured as she tucked her hair behind her ear. "I think he's not done playing whatever game this is though."

There. That wasn't a lie. It was as close to the truth she could get without laying out all of the little details. Like she was going to say anything about the memory onslaught and feelings that were stirring inside of her.

"That other vampire said that this was supposed to be a reunion," Bonnie told her and it was Caroline's turn to be scrutinized. "Have you ever met Klaus before?"

" _No._  Of course not." She didn't have to pretend to look hurt at the accusation, what Bonnie asked cut deeply. "When would I have met him? In between cheerleading practice and late night plans with all of you? Or maybe during lunch when you and Elena were who knows where." Because they definitely hadn't been around every so often, leaving her out of the loop all over again. "Or was it when I was with Tyler, trying to help him come up with a plan to  _not_  freak out with the full moon getting closer after having watched the recording his Uncle made of his werewolf transition? Oh no wait. It must have happened during the planning for the upcoming dance that you bailed on because god forbid there should be  _any kind of normal_  for any of us." They'd left her to come up with more excuses for why Elena and Bonnie had suddenly dropped off the social calendar.

"Caroline," Bonnie started but Caroline moved away, not really wanting to be near her so-called friend at that moment. "I'm sorry. It's just Kol said…"

"Because that guy seems really trustworthy. More so than me, huh? Just someone you've known since we were like toddlers. Friends since kindergarten. But none of that matters, right? Because I died and I didn't have the decency to stay dead." Caroline refused to let the tears in her eyes fall, raised her head a little at the shock in Bonnie's expression at her last words. "I'm not going to apologize for being a vampire, to be happy that  _I'm alive_ , Bonnie. I refuse to feel bad about that. I woke up  _alone_ , thinking that  _Elena_ had killed me, not having a clue what was going on and transitioned with  _no one_  there to help me. I  _survived_. And if you can't understand that then…" She shrugged, helpless for an answer. "I can't keep trying to get you to see that it's okay that I'm not dead."

She had crazier things to deal with instead, a bigger picture to try and understand now.

She didn't have time for this nonsense. She needed to focus on figuring out how to get the two of them out of there because if Hades hadn't felt remorse for abducting Persephone from her world, she wasn't sure how to stop Klaus from doing the same to her to get whatever he wanted from this trick. Even if she was still clueless as to what his wanted end result was.

"I don't want you dead, Caroline," Bonnie finally got out. "I just want things to go back to…" How they used to be. Before there had been any supernatural in their lives. Back when normal was something they'd all lived.

"They can't." Caroline shrugged helplessly at that.

Especially not with Elena dead.

Not with her head full of memories that shouldn't be there.

Caroline sighed and glanced at the window they'd escaped from earlier. That wasn't an option this time, not with Klaus' threat against Bonnie. "All we can do is figure out how to move forward."

She didn't expect Bonnie to move toward her and take her hand but she was grateful for the contact, the small show of unity. The schism between them wasn't healed and probably wouldn't be for some time if ever, but it was a step. "But okay, getting out of here. Let's go over our options."

As limited as they were, there had to be some.

* * *

It wasn't hard to overhear conversations with vampire hearing, especially not when one was walking down the hallway toward the room that still had no door secured to it. He listened intently, taking in all of the little telltale comments that his reports from others hadn't showed to him. Caroline Forbes on paper was barely a glimpse into the who she truly was. The friendships that others had reported appeared to not be as steady as he was led to believe if the conversation she'd had with the witch was anything to go by.

Witches usually weren't overly fond of vampires, the whole against nature thing that went along with their existence, but everyone had said that the doppelganger's circle was a tight one. That closeness apparently didn't extend equally to all of its members. Which could prove useful in regards to getting Caroline to see things his way.

But it was the news about her transition that had Klaus seething. His siblings and he had thought they were going crazy at first, the craving for blood was overwhelming, chaos reigning for hours after they'd sank their teeth into their first victim. But they'd had one another been able to figure out what was happening as a group even if it had been an entirely new experience that none had ever gone through before. They hadn't been alone.

Caroline had though and it rankled him that she'd gone through that insanity without help all because of Katherine and her little games. If that particular doppelganger hadn't already been used in the sacrifice this new information would have sealed her fate even further.

Klaus waited, plans already changing in his head, and listened for the sounds of the witch's breathing to switch to the softer sounds of sleep before approaching the doorway. Caroline was awake like he'd figured she would be and he watched her stiffen once she realized she was there.

"Take a walk with me," Klaus told her, hands clasped behind his back as he watched her turn toward him.

She didn't look wary this time, the fear replaced by a stubbornness he'd missed seeing outside of memories. The narrowing of her eyes as she regarded him with open distaste was something that had been reserved for dreams about those lonely months when he'd first abducted her. His lips quirked in amusement at it, unable to help smirking as he glanced over at the sleeping Bonnie. "I'd so hate for something to happen to your friend all because you denied me a simple chat."

"Your threats are getting old, but I guess that's basically all you do, huh?" Caroline snapped, though her voice was low as she exited the room, not wanting to wake her friend. "Threaten, take,  _force_ what you desire out of someone without any regard to what they want." She didn't know him, not really-what she saw in the memories  _didn't count-_ but from what she had seen in the last few hours Caroline thought she had him nailed pretty well.

She  _really_ didn't like how dimples became more pronounced as he smiled, entirely too amused by what she'd said as she followed him down the hallway, keeping as much distance between them as possible. The smell of blood invaded her senses as they descended down the stairs and past a room she didn't dare look into. Her fangs scraped at her gums, eyes flickering to black before she managed to get the monster under control, pushing it back down under her skin where it belonged.

They headed out through a pair of french doors and Caroline wanted to turn right back around, preferring the smell of blood to what lay ahead of them.

It was a garden and that shouldn't have been threatening, but it evoked emotions she wasn't ready to deal with just yet, tugged at pieces she had only recently shoved away, buried as deeply as she could get them and she could already feel them trying to push up and bloom. Caroline didn't dare look at Klaus, had a feeling he'd brought her here exactly for the reaction she was having, wanting her thrown off center.

"What do you want to talk about?" she asked as she stared at the marble statue of a swan, preferring to look at it instead of the flowers. Because the sooner they 'chatted' the sooner she could get back up to Bonnie and work on escape routes.

"I could keep you here indefinitely. Kidnapping did work in my favor once," Klaus started as he watched her. His hands itched to touch her, to stroke her hair that shone a little in the light of the lanterns that were scattered about the garden to illuminate it in the dark. He kept his hands behind his back for now though, enjoying the continued sight of her.

She glanced over at him then. "Sorry, still not buying into the whole Persephone thing." She might not know what his twisted endgame was but there had to be one. "And the whole kidnapping thing-especially if it continues-will just make me hate you more. I'm good at grudges. Ask Bonnie. Monica crushed my sandcastle that I'd worked for all of recess on and I've never forgiven her for that. When she tied with Victoria for the cheersquad and we could only take one I picked Victoria because at least she'd never destroyed something of mine in the first grade."

He arched a brow at that, finding her mean streak an endearing. "I hardly think you can hate someone that you don't know." Memories aside and those she was denying anyway.

She scoffed at that, arms crossing against her chest as she regarded him, thoroughly unimpressed. "You killed one of my best friends to break a curse that  _doesn't even make sense_. I'm pretty sure that's all I need to hate you.  _And_  you've threatened my other best friend like twice now so you're not really earning any brownie points."

"Can someone really be your best friend when they don't trust or like you because of what you've become," Klaus mused, watching the hurt flash in her eyes before she managed to steel herself again. "I gather you mean that the sun and moon curse is what doesn't make sense to you?" She nodded and he smiled, unsurprised that her little band hadn't quite put all of the pieces together. No one outside of his family knew what he was truly trying to do. "That curse was a lie."

"Of course it was," Caroline muttered. "But Elena is still dead. So there had to be a reason for it." Or maybe not. Did monsters really need a reason to kill? Though the whole sacrifice thing suggested that there had to be an actual need for her death. "Why do you have double fangs? How does your blood heal a vampire from a werewolf bite?"

"The doppel- _Elena_ ," Klaus amended at her sharp look. "Is dead because a thousand years ago my mother decided to lock up the wolf part of me away when it finally revealed itself on the full moon. Doing so stopped me from being complete. Kept me from becoming the werewolf-vampire hybrid I was always meant to be. Elena needed to die with the others so that I could unlock that part again. So my blood would unlock your memories."

Caroline took a step back at that, shaking her head. "No."

"Magic always has a way to undo something that makes one unwhole. This time through a doppelganger being born every five hundred years. First Katherine who managed to outrun my first attempt." Though not his second. "And recently Elena. She died so that I could become whole and you-" Klaus stepped toward her, annoyed when Caroline moved back, out of his reach. "So you could be as well."

There was more to it than all of that, but there was no point in overwhelming her more than he already had.

Elena had died because of her? Because of some nonsense that the monster in front of her was going on about? Caroline's mind was reeling with this new information and she glanced toward the window to the room that Bonnie slept in. She didn't think Bonnie would ever forgive her for this one. Not that she even knew how to explain it.

_So apparently that evil Klaus guy thinks he's Hades incarnate and I'm his apparent Persephone and he needed to kill Elena so he could become a hybrid and unlock these memories that he forced into my head when he gave me his blood._  Yeah, that would go over so well.

"I didn't ask for this." How was she supposed to even try for normal with the weight of it all? "I don't want it. Take it back."

His lips curled into a cruel smile at her words and she swallowed, forcing her feet to remain in place. Showing weakness or fear to a predator was never a good idea-hadn't she seen enough Animal Planet to know that?-and Klaus was definitely the worst predator she'd ever faced.

"No." The finality in his voice had her bristling, her monster stirring just below the surface, dying to be released but she kept it down because Caroline had a feeling that Klaus would like seeing her vampire features on display.

"As I had been saying though, Caroline," Klaus continued and she hated the way he said her name like an intimate caress. She had always wanted someone to say it like that but not  _him._  "Kidnapping worked in my favor once but I believe that another course of action should be taken this time. You and Bonnie are free to leave."

"Just like that?" Because Caroline doubted it would be that easy.

"On the condition that twice a week I get you all to myself for a few hours." Allow her that false sense of security, or having control of her life as he continued to orchestrate things to push at the memories she was trying to run from. While also giving him a few hours a week to seduce his way back into her life. He'd already seen some weak points in regards to her friends, surely there were others for him to exploit and bind her closer to him. It'd give him time to work on his plans for protecting her as well.

"What's the catch?" Because there had to be one. Didn't the villains always have one? And Klaus was so fitting into that villain category.

"None aside from that your failure to show or trying to run and hide will leave your town vulnerable to my anger. And I've missed bathing cities in blood, Caroline," Klaus replied, smirk slow and dangerous as he stepped right into her personal space, unable to keep himself from touching her hair. He slid the lock between his fingers as he held her gaze. "Don't think for a second that I wouldn't do so. Starting with your little witch friend and ending with your mother. The Sheriff of the town, isn't she?"

Her fangs were out in a second, eyes darkening as she shoved him away from her, snarling. " _Don't_  threaten my mom." She might be terrified of her mother knowing what she was and maybe they didn't have the best track record in the last year but she  _loved_  her mother.

His eyes flashed gold, the possessiveness in his gaze as he looked at her having Caroline quickly push her features back to normal, though she continued to glare at him. "Do we have a deal, love?" Klaus asked as he looked her over. "The plans you've been working on with the witch all end the same. With you right back here and her being burned alive. I believe you'll find my way gives her a much better chance at living."

"Yes." Funny how such a simple word could feel so heavy to say.

"Go wake your friend and I'll have someone drive the two of you home," Klaus told her and she turned, not needing to be told twice. "Oh and Caroline, I'll see you in a few days."

She shivered at the promise in his tone and pushed back all of the worry that wanted to drown her, choosing instead to focus on waking Bonnie and getting as far away from Klaus and the madness of this house.

 


	5. Chapter 5

_The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves._   
**Richard Bach**

* * *

It was on the tip of Bonnie's tongue to ask  _how_  Caroline had managed to secure their freedom. But it was obvious how tightly wound Caroline was and while technically that was almost normal-Caroline was a bit too Type A for her own good-this was  _different._  While she might wear her emotions on her sleeves at times, Caroline always knew how to keep up appearances, to look calm and collected when she needed to.

Bonnie knew that vampire emotions were far more heightened than human ones and she wondered if that was part of the reason Caroline looked as frazzled as she did. But she thought there was more to it than that. Kol's words about Klaus and Caroline being reunited still swirled around her mind. She didn't know what that meant exactly but she couldn't help but be suspicious of it.

Caroline had been right though. Her friend hadn't been off doing anything weird in the last month or so and it wasn't like vampires could compel other vampires anyway so that ruled out compulsion. Something had happened between the two of them though, otherwise Caroline wouldn't have looked so upset, entirely too vulnerable, when she'd been allowed to head back to the room. Klaus had to have done  _something_  to shake Caroline's careful control that much and Bonnie wished her friend would fill her in on it.

But everything Caroline had said to her the day before was also mulling about her head. She hadn't been wrong about the strain that had been between them. It wasn't fair how she'd reacted to Caroline becoming a vampire but Bonnie hadn't known how to cope with it. Damon and Stefan were one thing. They weren't really friends. Her grandmother was dead because of them. She didn't regret how she'd screwed them over in the past. She didn't really trust either of them.

She had known Caroline since they were toddlers. Probably even before then but her clearest memories were of the two of them having a tea party with koolaid and their stuffed animals. Bonnie hadn't known how to have the two pieces of Caroline coexist in her mind. The monster and her best friend. She still wasn't all that sure how to do it. Keeping her distance had seemed like the best idea at the time.

Obviously it hadn't been.

She hadn't meant to hurt Caroline but she had and there wasn't really a way to rectify that. The past didn't just go away because one wished it would.

"We have to figure out how to explain our absence," Caroline finally said, startling Bonnie from her thoughts. "Like Stefan can know the truth. And we have to tell him that…" She swallowed not quite wanting to voice the next part.

There might have been no love lost between her and Damon Salvatore but he was Stefan's family and the other Salvatore was definitely going to take the news of his brother's death hard. "But like your dad and my mom…" Caroline sighed, not entirely sure how they were going to explain any of it. "We have to come up with something." Though maybe her mom hadn't even noticed. Maybe she'd been stuck at work the whole time.

"We could do one of those 'I was at your place and you were at mine' swaps?" Bonnie suggested. It had worked before when they were sneaking out to parties near the Falls.

"Yeah." Maybe? Caroline sighed as she steered the car down the road that would lead to the Salvatore mansion. "And Elena…" Did the town even know about her death yet? How were they explaining that away if they did? Because if Elena's death was widespread news their original plan was so not going to work and the two of them were going to be dealing with two very worried and irate parents.

"Stefan first?" Bonnie asked even though she was certain that was where they were headed because of the turn off Caroline had done.

"Yeah. We should see what we're heading back into." They'd only been gone two days but it felt like an eternity to Caroline.

Probably because she had an eternity of another's memories whirling around her head now.

Her hands tightened a little more on the steering wheel, though she was conscious not to bend it as she tried to feel in control of her life again. It wasn't really working, not when half of her mind was screaming at her to turn the car back around and head to Klaus, to find comfort in his arms. The other part was desperate to get away from him, trying to stifle the heat that still lingered on her skin from where he'd touched her briefly before she'd managed to snatch herself away from him.

"Maybe Elena made it somehow," Bonnie started and Caroline envied the bit of hope in her friend's voice.

She seriously doubted that was the case, certain that Klaus would have mentioned if their friend was alive. It would have given him at least half a checkmark in the 'not as horrible as he could be' column that she wasn't even sure should be an actual thing in her mental checklist. But he hadn't corrected her whenever she brought up Elena's death...had said it was necessary for her...whatever those things were in her head.

"Yeah. Maybe."

They could really do with a little hope, even if she couldn't quite grasp onto it.

* * *

Watching Caroline drive away from the house, the car eventually disappearing from view as he stood in front of the window that overlooked the gate, had been pure torture. Each step she took, each inch that took her further away from him was like a piece of wood digging into his gut, one that was twisted and soaked through with vervain. He remembered their last goodbye, centuries upon centuries ago, before she'd ceased to exist and his world had been nothing but emptiness.

It took every ounce of control that Klaus had to not head after her, to not drag her back kicking and screaming and lock her away in a place where no one would ever be able to get to her, where he could keep her safe and make her see, make her understand how much he needed her.

He let her go, certain that this was the best course for getting her to see what he already knew, for her to accept that her fate was irrevocably tied to his own. She needed this bit of freedom, needed time to adjust to the memories swirling around her head, and Klaus needed to set a few things into motion anyway. It would be easier to do that without Caroline there. His focus would have been solely on her and that couldn't happen just yet. Not with how vulnerable she was still.

"It seems that we'll be staying in Mystic Falls for a bit longer than planned," Klaus started without bothering to turn around to face his brothers. "Elijah, head into town and finish compelling the rest of it to secure her safety and get that seat we'll be needing on the council. " Knowing what those fools were privy to would be useful.

"You'll need to let Rebekah and Finn know that we won't be heading their way anytime soon then," Elijah reminded and Klaus frowned at that. Finn wouldn't mind, happy to be left continue on as he'd been doing for the last century. But their sister would be annoyed and an aggravated Rebekah was never fun to be around. At least not when she was directing her wrath toward them. When it was thrown at others it was quite amusing.

"They'll be contacted." Klaus wondered which of his messengers he wouldn't mind losing to his sister's temper. He'd need to pick one to sacrifice to relay the details. "And Elijah, there is little point in keeping up pretense here any longer. We're not hiding among them." They would let their power ripple about and be the gods they'd become over the centuries. There was no more hiding in plain sight when the world was theirs to feast upon.

There was a shift in the air as Elijah left the room without a word, ready to get the ball rolling.

"And what about me?" Kol piped in and Klaus finally turned around, not at all surprised to see his younger brother lounging on the oversized chair with his feet hanging over the side.

"The Bennett witch," Klaus started, arching a brow at Kol's dark smirk. "Do what you need to ensure she's utilizing the full capabilities of her magical inheritance." Bonnie Bennett was a direct descendant of that family line and she was barely scraping the bottom of her potential. That would not do for what he'd need of her later on.

"I may need to bring in some others to help me with her," Kol told him as he mused over which of his witch crew would help persuade this new one best.

"Keep them out of my hair," Klaus replied before heading toward the door.

"What about you? You're not already going to skip after your little flower monster, are you?" There was far too much amusement in Kol's tone for Klaus' liking. "Goddess of Spring as a vampire. Who would have thought that was possible?"

"She was always much more than that." Everyone seemed to forget that she'd been Queen of the Underworld and reigned with him for ages, more feared than he ever was because of the power she so successfully wielded. "But no, I have our other guest to see to."

Klaus strode out of the room before Kol could answer, considered the conversation finished as he headed down into the basement that had been refitted to house a number of cells. He stopped at the last one and opened it, unsurprised to find the boy leaning against one of the walls, chains still locked around him and his heartbeat still regulating back to normal.

"Hello, Tyler," Klaus greeted as he picked up the clothes stacked neatly outside of the cell before tossing them to the boy who looked up at him with uncertainty that quickly changed to relief as he took in his surroundings.

"I didn't get out," the boy murmured, the gratefulness in his tone a welcome sound.

This one would be useful.

* * *

Stefan had always seemed to be the stable Salvatore brother, but Bonnie and Caroline wondered if they were going to need to reasses that trait for him as they entered the boarding house. The couches were overturned, books scattered about the floor and Elena's body was on the coffee table that was covered by a white sheet. Her body was pale and there was no sign of breathing, of life anywhere that Caroline could see or hear.

Confirmation that their friend was truly dead wasn't something either of them had wanted and Caroline could feel Bonnie deflate a little at her side as they took in the scene.

It was Stefan's ranting into the phone as he walked back into the room that drew Caroline's attention though. His clothes were bloodied, hair a mess, and the veins in his face were more pronounced, teetering on the edge of showing his monster. Caroline shifted in front of Bonnie, wanting to protect her friend from what might happen.

Stefan might have been a 'good' vampire but he was still someone who needed blood to survive, who craved the taste of it, who heard the beating of a heart and wanted to latch onto a vein and listen to it patter off.

"You owe me," he practically growled into the phone, eyes darkening as the person on the other end hung up.

"Stefan?" Caroline started.

She watched as he finally took them in, blocked his path as he flashed toward Bonnie, pushing him back and off his feet when he'd tried to grab onto her friend. Stefan careened back into one of the toppled over chairs, blinking in confusion before he focused back on them.

Bonnie had her hand up, power ready to be wielded, while Caroline worked to keep her face neutral, to stave off the need to snarl at him. "You can do something," Stefan pleaded as he looked between the two of them, his focus finally turning back to Bonnie. "Bring her back somehow. There has to be a way."

"I don't know of any," Bonnie began and Stefan moved to flash toward her again, ready to bat Caroline out of the way but Bonnie sent him flying into the wall with a wave of her hand. Caroline snarled at him, unable to hold back her fangs or the blood rushing to her face, the darkening of her eyes. "We didn't come across any ways in the grimoires." And they had searched over any that Bonnie's grandmother had kept, finding nothing that could help.

"Where were you?" Stefan demanded, magic pinning him to the wall. "You were supposed to help her. We were supposed to...it wasn't...she wasn't meant to die..." He stopped struggling against the invisible weights, his gaze turning to Elena's body as he sagged.

"What happened?" Bonnie asked as she released her hold on Stefan, though she kept a wary eye on him.

Caroline barely heard anything that he said, her focus on her dead friend.

Elena didn't look scared. She almost looked peaceful...or maybe resigned was a better description. Klaus had killed her to break his curse, to...she couldn't think about that part. About how he'd murdered her best friend to unlock something in her. Not that it was an actual unlocking of anything.

Though didn't that make it all even more pointless if the memories swirling around her mind weren't real? Why murder Elena for a trick? How did that make any sense?

Not that her being Persephone reborn made sense either.

_I'm so sorry_.

It wasn't her fault and yet Caroline couldn't help but silently repeat those words in her head as she looked down at Elena.

"I'm going to kill him," Stefan breathed out as he came to stand beside her and Caroline wasn't sure what he was talking about at first. "I don't know how but I'm going to kill Klaus."

Those words shouldn't feel like a punch to the gut, like someone had ripped out her heart. The thought of Klaus being killed shouldn't make it hurt for her to breathe. That was not a normal reaction for her to be having at all toward the monster that had killed Elena.

And yet Caroline couldn't shake it.

"Stefan…" Bonnie sighed and Caroline could feel her looking toward her. It didn't take more than the worry in her friend's eyes to force Caroline to remember the news they needed to tell the other vampire.

She might not care about Damon Salvatore at all, might even have silently celebrated his death in her head and Caroline had a feeling that Bonnie had as well. He'd tormented them in different ways and there would be no tears shed for him by either of them.

But Stefan.

Damon was his brother.

Caroline took a deep breath before looking over at the younger Salvatore. Delaying the truth didn't seem like a good idea. The ripping off the bandaid approach looked like the best way to tell this to him.

"Damon is dead."

She didn't expect for Stefan's knees to give out, for the vampire to collapse to the ground or the cry of anguish that was ripped from his lungs. Caroline followed him down, not liking the look of devastation and hopelessness that encompassed him. She wanted to offer comfort, even if she wasn't sure how she could do that when he'd just lost his entire world.

First Elena and now Damon.

Maybe she should have expected this.

"Go."

The hollowness in his voice had her hesitating. "Get out," Stefan continued, the thirst for violence she saw in his gaze had Caroline shifting backwards from him. She grabbed Bonnie's hand before her friend could protest and flashed them out of the house and far down the driveway.

Caroline could still hear Stefan's rage as he tore the place apart, the beginnings of dark mutterings of how he was going to 'destroy Klaus life', and she flashed Bonnie and her farther away, not trusting Stefan's current state of mind.

"I should have been more tactful," Caroline muttered when she finally stopped moving. She'd gotten them as close to Bonnie's house as she dared, not really wanting anyone to accidentally pick up on her flashing through the town.

"I don't know that there was really a better way," Bonnie assured her as she glanced over at the street sign. Prolonging the news might have made it worse.

Maybe. Caroline wasn't sure how else she could have brought Damon's death up to Stefan. Waiting a few days seemed like it would have been worse in the long run. "We never did come up with what we're going to tell our parents."

She could always compel them but she'd compelled her mother once already. Caroline really didn't want to do that again. She still felt guilty about it. "And then there's the whole Stefan is going off the rails and totally has Elena's body and how are we going to explain that?" she continued as she tried to focus on those bits and pieces. It was infinitely better than the parts that had happened to her. "Plus Damon. Like my mom is going to wonder about him." And how was she going to explain the whole meeting up with Klaus for meetings or whatever? That was so not going to go over well.

"Maybe they won't have noticed that we weren't around?" Bonnie replied after a moment. Both of their parents had odd hours because of their jobs. They missed seeing one another some days because of schedules. Maybe they could just chalk it all up to that.

Caroline nodded, annoyed by the fact that she hadn't thought of that. "Can't hurt to try?" It actually had a decent chance of working. "I'm making sure you get through your door."

"And you're calling me when you step through yours," Bonnie told her and Caroline smiled at that, thankful that Bonnie was worried, that her friend  _did_ care.

"I will," Caroline assured her as they started down the street, silence falling between them. There was so much to talk about, even more to process, but neither of them could quite find the words to say as they made it to Bonnie's house.

Bonnie hugged her goodbye, startling Caroline for a second, still not used to her friend actually reaching out to her. She hugged her back as tightly as she dared though before watching Bonnie head inside and even then she waited to listen, needing to ensure that the witch was okay.

It was only when she heard Bonnie's dad's voice that Caroline finally turned around and slowly started the journey to her home, hopeful that it would still feel like that with all of the new memories inside her.

* * *

Bonnie had been right in her assessment. Liz Forbes had been too busy with work to even realize that Caroline had been gone.

She had forced a smile when her mother came rushing into their home an hour after she'd arrived, quickly asking how school was as she tried to put together a sandwich so she could head back out to deal with some issues. Caroline could guess what they were related to, though she wasn't all that sure anymore if her assumptions were correct anymore.

Damon  _was_ dead.

But others had died in the sacrifice and maybe her mom or other officers had stumbled upon that mess and were trying to figure out what to do about it. Caroline knew that the vampire related deaths were pushed under the rug, shielded from the town's eyes as her mother and the others continued to investigate, but she couldn't actually  _say_  that she knew anything.

So she'd watched her mom dash around before getting an awkward smile and a 'there's a frozen lasagna in the freezer' as Liz left.

Caroline remained sitting at the table, staring at the place her mother had been only moments before. She remembered when the two of them had been closer, back when she was little and her father had still been around, helping with the load of being a family. But that closeness had waned, the two of them drifting apart until there was a chasm between them and Caroline didn't know how to close it.

Before the whole vampire thing she hadn't particularly wanted to, but the whole dying thing had put some things into perspective, and her relationship with her mother had been one of them. She yearned for family meals and sitting on the floor in front of her bed while her mother braided her hair. They were silly things to want, memories of a childhood she couldn't have again, but that didn't stop her from missing them.

The fact that they mixed now with memories of another woman she could see herself calling mother, one who strung flowers in her hair, and called her by a name she refused to acknowledge as her own only made her ache for her mother's touch even more now.

Eventually she headed to her room, stopping at the vanity that had photographs of her little trio of friends taped around the edges. There was Elena, Bonnie and her smiling in their cheerleading uniforms from Freshman year. The three of them in middle school when she'd had braces to work on a smile that would outshine Elena's. At a sleepover where they'd squished in together as close as they could to all fit in the frame.

They would never be able to do any of those things again as a trio and that twisted in her gut, nearly overwhelmed her with the intensity of guilt that washed over her. She had wanted to best Elena since the second grade when a rivalry had bloomed between them but not like  _this_. Chosen first was one thing, Elena dying so she could be the one on top was another.

Sobs wracked through her body as she slid down onto the floor, mourning for the girl she had known, the friend who she'd had and would never be able to see again. The tears wouldn't stop as the insane reality of the situation crashed down on her, her control lost for the moment, a concept she couldn't quite grasp onto as grief and guilt tried to strangle her.

Eventually Caroline managed to crawl into bed, tugging covers over her as she tried to push everything away, sinking exhaustedly to sleep.

Laughter enveloped her, the woman from her memories smiling face clear as day in front of her. She listened to the sounds of the world around them, could hear the shoots pushing up from the ground as she ran her hands over what had been barren earth. The grass tickled her palms, flowers twirling around her fingers as she looked up at a sky that was both familiar and new.

Part of her ached for something far below the dirt though, a world that called for her, one that she couldn't head back to just yet. She pushed the roots downward, letting them drift further into the soil, a silent message of longing for her husband.

She turned back toward her mother, question on her tongue as she watched the older woman freeze, terror in her eyes before she was just gone.

She pushed up from the ground, looking around for her, for a sign of life or anything of the woman she had loved since birth. There was nothing though, no hint of her ever existing and murmurings of an ending swam in her head, urged her feet to run, to head toward the gates that would lead to her other home, to where her heart yearned to be.

"Hades!" His name rang from her throat, terror filling her with each step she took, every second that passed without her stepping foot into their Underworld.

She was Queen of that place though. Surely that should offer her some sort of protection to what was happening, the murmurings of the end of their age coming true before her eyes. She heard the piercing screams in the distance as other gods who had been visiting her mother's fields were ripped apart, didn't dare look back to witness their fate, afraid that wasting those precious few seconds would doom her as well.

Her heart pounded in her chest, the grass no longer a welcoming feeling against the pads of her feet. The beautiful blue of the sky, the scent of the trees and flowers stifling as she tried to get to the entrance to the dark underbelly of her kingdom with Hades.

She never made it.

Searing pain cut through her as she burned from the inside out, light extinguished before she could make another sound.

Life to nothingness in a blink of an eye.

Caroline woke gasping for air, as cold as ice as she tried to grab onto something to center herself. Tears streamed down her face and she reached over, expecting arms to pull her close, for his voice to tell her it was only a nightmare, to soothe her frightened soul.

There was no one there and her heart clenched tightly as the loneliness of her situation washed over her, body screaming to head to where Klaus was, wanting to bury herself in his arms. But she pushed that need down, tried to force it off, to stave her need for touch by wrapping her arms around herself and count slowly as she forced her breathing to become normal.

She couldn't shake the coldness that had enveloped her though, her mind torn in two with her deaths replaying simultaneously. She didn't think she would ever feel warm again.

Slowly she managed to push herself out of the bed and made her way to her mother's room. Caroline slid into the bed, remembering how being in it had comforted her when she was a child. She didn't find any then but it was better than her own bed, her mother's scent calming her a little.

There was no falling asleep though, her mind too afraid of what it might see.

So when Liz finally came home that night she found a terrified Caroline laying in her bed and slowly laid down beside her, not sure what was happening or what had frightened her daughter. She hesitated for a moment-too used to being rebuffed when she did offer comfort-before pulling Caroline against her and murmuring softly to try and help her daughter through whatever had happened.

"I've got you," Liz promised and Caroline cried harder at that, for the woman she'd lost, for the person she'd been, and terrified of losing the one she clung desperately to.

She didn't dare fall asleep again, afraid of what she might see, even more worried about how much her mind and soul would yearn for Klaus if she let memories play out while she slept. She ached for him too much already and couldn't stand the idea of being even more vulnerable to his presence the next time she had to see him.

Instead Caroline let her mother hold her, faking sleep until Liz finally succumbed to slumber. And then Caroline simply laid there in the bed curled up next to her mother, desperately wishing she could go back to being a little girl again and trying not to think too hard on which version of her childhood she longed to step back into.

 


	6. Chapter 6

_You can close your eyes to reality but not to memories  
_ **Stanislaw Jerzy Lec**

* * *

Caroline might not have slept that night, but she made sure to make it look like she was fast asleep when her mother woke. Being awake before her mother would have set off warning bells in the woman's head and Caroline had a feeling there were already enough of those going off because she'd wound up in Liz' bed. She didn't want her mom to worry, not with everything that seemed to be going on in their small town, especially not with Klaus sticking around Mystic Falls.

Caroline needed to know that her mom was on full alert and not focused on anything that was happening with her. Not paying attention could get her mom hurt or worse and Caroline didn't think she could handle losing her mother. Not with the images of another disappearing before her eyes, the pain of that loss still fresh, practically etched into her bones.

Maybe their relationship was rocky at best but she still remembered that talk from a few weeks back, the one when they'd bonded and then she had needed to compel it all away to keep Damon and Stefan safe. Damon was dead now, Stefan was losing his mind, but it was the fear that her mom might not accept her as she'd been starting to that kept Caroline from revealing any of it to her all over again.

Prejudice ran deep and considering a lot of that prejudice toward vampires was actually pretty accurate Caroline didn't want to chance her mom wanting to kill her. She didn't even want to contemplate it, pushing down any worries over it whenever they crept into her mind.

It took all of her self control to not move when she felt her mother brush hair from her face, heard the soft sigh of worry escape Liz's mouth before the mattress moved as Liz got off the bed. Caroline didn't budge until she heard the water running. She slowly opened her eyes before rolling to her back when she was confident that her mother was actually showering.

Caroline wanted to wrap herself back up in the covers, to lay in the comfort of her mother's scent, but she knew that comfort wouldn't last for long. Being idle would allow her mind to wander to subjects she didn't want to think about, to replay moments she didn't want to focus on. So she pushed herself out of the bed and headed back down the hall to her room, listening to the shower run as she pulled out clothes to wear for school that day.

It was a mistake when she realized that the shirt she'd picked out had been a Christmas present from Elena the year before, images of her friend's body on the Salvatore table flashing in her mind. Caroline forced herself to breathe deeply, trying to get her hands to stop trembling like they were as more images flickered into view, the coldness the nightmare had created seeping into her skin again.

"What's going on, Caroline?" she heard her mother ask, breaking her from her thoughts.

Caroline glanced over, wondering how long she'd been staring at the shirt in her hands when she realized that her mother was already dressed for work. She hadn't even heard the shower turn off. "I think we both know there's no point in you trying to do the whole caring act," Caroline forced the words out, made sure her tone was cutting as she laid the shirt back on the bed.

Usually that would be enough to have her mother leaving her alone, more walls going up between the two of them, but Liz didn't walk away. "You were terrified last night," Liz continued and it took all of Caroline's control to not rip the fabric of the skirt she was placing down onto the bed. "You faked being asleep this morning- _yes_ , I did notice that-and I find you in a daze and looking down at clothes instead of keeping to your tight schedule for getting ready."

Caroline hadn't expected her mother to pick up on any of it, definitely hadn't expected her to keep pushing after the initial brush off. It made her heart ache to see that her mother did care. Part of her knew that the woman did, but the tension that had built between them, the distance that had grown had caused Caroline to wonder more than once if her mother loved her more than her job, left her thinking she was second best to someone who should have picked her first.

She shrugged, trying to keep the charade in place as she smoothed her hands along the skirt, the texture of the fabric easing her frayed nerves. "It was just a nightmare."

Liz still didn't leave though. Instead she stepped inside of the room and sat down on the bed. "Honey, I know something has been going on with you. I chalked it up to the struggle all teenagers go through during high school. Complications between us from how I dove into work after the divorce," Liz started and Caroline couldn't look at her, fearful that her mother would see the truth of what she'd become in the last few months, even if she wasn't entirely sure what she was any longer. "But I can tell that it's more than that."

Caroline opened her mouth to protest, to deny, but Liz touched her arm, stifling her response. "I know that I haven't..." Liz sighed, struggling for the right words.

"Mom, it's just cheerleading stuff. The girls are so not at all where I want them to be," Caroline started, but Liz was giving her another once over, clearly unconvinced. "And then there's the spring dance meetings and  _ugh_  they couldn't possibly be more disorganized. Plus Matt and I only broke up a few weeks ago." Didn't she deserve to have a bit of a breakdown for that alone?

"I'll listen whenever you are ready to talk about it," Liz continued, giving her arm a small squeeze.

She should have responded with a scathing comment, kept the status quo between the two of them, but Caroline couldn't bring herself to do so. Instead she nodded, unable to get any actual words out in reply. That alone probably validated her mother's concerns.

Her mother's cell started ringing and Caroline turned her attention back toward her clothes. She was going to need a new shirt. She couldn't fathom walking around with the constant reminder of Elena against her skin.

"I love you," Liz told her as she got up from the bed.

"I love you too," Caroline murmured as her mom headed out of the room.

She took a deep breath as the door closed, gaining control of her emotions. She'd missed enough days of school already. She wasn't about to miss another. Besides, going to class and focusing on all of the trivialities of school might help her ignore everything else that was going on for a few hours at least.

Maybe she would find a copy of the Hades and Persephone myth in the library during her study period.

Caroline dressed quickly before moving to her vanity to do her hair and makeup, faltering briefly over how exactly to wear her hair that day. She touched the back of it, almost feeling the ringlets that used to hang with flowers entwined lovingly in it. It took a shaky breath and a few more brushes to push the memory out of her head, opting for letting it fall naturally.

Her bedroom door opened again and she turned toward her mother, not liking the new worry that was etched in her eyes. "Caroline, when was the last time you saw Elena?"

"A couple of days ago." It wasn't exactly a lie. That body wasn't her friend. It was just flesh and bones. It wouldn't be how she would remember Elena Gilbert. "I think in class. But I know not at cheerleading. She's been missing a lot of practice. I think it's the whole new boyfriend thing." Not that Stefan was exactly new nor was he the reason her friend hadn't been able to make practice. "It's still all shiny for her." It was so weird to talk about her in present tense when Caroline knew the truth. "Why?"

"Jenna called the station. She's missing. Do you have any idea where she might be?" Liz asked as she watched her carefully, and Caroline shook her head.

She couldn't really say 'on the Salvatore's coffee table'. "No, but she's got to be around somewhere. Maybe the graveyard? I know she used to go there to think."

She needed to call Stefan and let him know people were going to start looking for Elena. The police would definitely want to check the boarding house. He was going to need to give her body over at some point. Her family deserved to bury her, to be able to mourn her.

"I'll give her a call on the way to school. And have Bonnie do it too. I'm picking her up today. Maybe she'll answer one of us if her and Jenna are the outs," Caroline offered, keeping up the charade of believing everything was fine. She turned back to the mirror, putting on the finishing touches. "I'll call you when I get to school if I hear anything from her."

Her mother's cell started ringing again and Caroline grabbed her purse and car keys, slipping out of her bedroom before her mother could respond. She heard the beginnings of the conversation as she headed out of the house though.

"Two bodies and this looks like some sort of occult setup," the deputy was saying and Caroline hurried toward her car, not sure whether to be relieved or worried that the site of the sacrifice had apparently been found.

She dialed Stefan's number as soon as she got in the car, not surprised when he didn't answer. "Hey, Stefan, do you have any idea where Elena might be? She apparently didn't come home last night and Jenna is freaking. So my mom is freaking and search parties are starting."

She didn't want to leave a message that outright said he had Elena's body in his house, but he needed to know that people were looking for her. First place her mom or the deputies would go would be the boyfriend's. Considering Stefan had her body in the living room and the place was destroyed it really wouldn't look good for him at all if he left things the way they were. A head's up could be helpful. "Call me back when you get this."

Caroline hung up after that and took another deep breath to center herself before starting in the direction of Bonnie's house. They seriously needed to talk and plan what the hell they were going to do to move forward. Especially when she saw the vampire who'd gotten them away from the wolves the other night walking down the street as if he owned it-Kol maybe? She thought that might have been his name.

She didn't know why he was there but it really couldn't be for anything good.

Caroline veered the car in his direction, rolling down her window as she slowed down beside him. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Okay so  _maybe_  that wasn't the best way to greet someone who could no doubt snap her in half quicker than she could move but she was seriously done with all of the craziness. Hadn't Mystic Falls met its quota by then?

"And a hello to you as well, little spring goddess," Kol chirped as he stopped, a perpetual look of laughter tugging at his lips. She thought back to a book her dad had read to her when she was little of a boy who never grew up when she looked at Kol. It wasn't like Caroline imaged Peter Pan's impish expression to be though. This one was far more sinister around the edges, a touch of death that would never be shaken.

Her nails dug into the wheel at his greeting, the acknowledgement of her apparent past life still hard to swallow. Kol stepped off the curb to lean into her window and part of her screamed to flee, alert to the danger he represented. Her annoyance was winning out though. "I'm sure Nik will be more than happy to fill you in on all of the pesky little details," Kol continued, dropping a brand new cell onto her seat. "You'll find his number in there along with a few others for any emergency purposes."

"I don't want it," Caroline bit out but Kol was already pushing away from the car, hands held up in mock surrender.

"Far be it from me to get involved in a lover's quarrel," he quipped before he was gone, flashing off faster than she'd ever seen any vampire do before. There were secrets there that she was yet to uncover, a difference between his vampirism and the Salvatores that she wasn't quite privy to yet but Caroline was adamant she would uncover.

She glared down at the cell phone on her passenger seat before driving away. She tried to ignore its existence all the way to Bonnie's only slipping it into her purse when she pulled up to her friend's house. She was only keeping it in there so Bonnie wouldn't see it. She would get rid of it later.  _After_  she found out exactly what 'pesky little details' there were that Klaus had failed to mention when she'd made her deal with him.

But first she had to get through another day of high school.

Maybe by the end of it Elena's body would be 'found' and allow them all a little bit of closure in the insanity that was their lives.

* * *

"I made it through it," Tyler murmured, still reeling from his first transformation. He'd been dreading it ever since watching his Uncle Mason's recordings, convinced there was simply no way he'd survive the kind of pain his uncle had endured.

But he  _had_ and he was alive to tell the tale all because of the hybrid sitting across from him on the mahogany chair. He watched Klaus swish the dark liquid around in the tumbler that he held while looking over some papers held out for him. The other man was almost familiar; not because he knew the stranger but because he now could name the scent that went along with him.  _Werewolf._ It was embedded in Tyler's skin as well and it was mixed in with Klaus' though there was a far older one that Tyler couldn't quite define there as well.

"You did," Klaus agreed before nodding confirmation to the new layouts he was being shown before the other wolf left him alone with his newest acquisition.

He doubted the Lockwood boy saw himself as such but he'd understand his new role soon enough. It had been centuries since Klaus had helped anyone out of the goodness of his heart, not since he was living the lie of being a simple human. Now everything he did for another benefited him in some way. Otherwise there was little point in interacting with those far beneath him.

Werewolves might not have been as plentiful as before, practically extinct on most continents, but he was hardly hurting for a pack loyal to him. A lone wolf in Mystic Falls would barely have been a blimp on his radar but the fact that Katherine had caused the boy's transition for the sacrifice had been enough for Klaus to take a brief interest in him.

It was the fact that Tyler interacted with Caroline, that the two seemed to have bonded in the last few weeks that had Klaus working the boy into his plans.

"My witch can do the same spell next time, ease your transition a bit more. I'm told the pain lessens each time," Klaus commented as he rested back against the large chair, fixing his attention on the still slightly jittery boy. He'd seen the same side effects of the transition on others after their first few times. The pain had ebbed but the adrenaline lingered. He'd felt the pain as well but it was nothing in the face of what he'd endured before, his duality allowing him to push through it faster than any of the others seemed to, even when his wolf had been dormant for centuries.

"You would do that?" Tyler asked, the relief palpable in his voice as he looked transfixed at Klaus. He itched to run, to do something to help get all the excess energy out of his system, but forced himself to remain sitting. He might have endured one transformation but he wasn't stupid, he was going to need to go through that every month until he died now. There was no off switch for being a werewolf. Or at least none that he knew of.

Klaus lifted his glass, smirk playing at his lips. "That all depends on you, Tyler, and how useful you make yourself." After all there was no point in wasting his resources on anyone failed to benefit him.

"What do you want?"

The earnestness in the boy's tone insured victory before Klaus even laid out his demands, but he'd learned long ago how to weave a web of loyalty. Unfortunately there would be no compelling Tyler as he'd done his other wolves before their transition, but holding the only keys to the boy's hopes and dreams, giving him a chance to see an actual future again should help secure the first few threads.

"It's simple enough really. Be my eyes and ears, introduce me to your mother." An invitation into the current Mayor's house would go a long way in instilling his family's presence in the town.

Relief seemed to sweep through Tyler at Klaus' words and he nodded. He could that, not seeing any downsides to the requests. "I'll also need you to keep an eye on Caroline Forbes. I believe you're acquainted with her," Klaus continued before finally taking a sip of his drink.

Tyler's heartbeat sped up a little at that, breathing a little more pronounced as doubt started to set in. "Why do you want me to watch Caroline? You're not going to hurt her are you?" They might not exactly be friends even if they'd known one another since childhood. But she had been the only one there for him with everything that was going on and he owed her for that at least, didn't he?

"You misunderstand me, Tyler," Klaus set the drink down on the table as he stood, certain the conversation would be ending soon enough. "I want you to insure that no harm comes to her." It would be better if he could compel the whelp to sacrifice himself to save her, but that option was being utilized on the other citizens of Mystic Falls. Tyler's presence would be an extra sense of security for when Klaus couldn't be within arm's reach of her. "I believe the two of you have gotten closer these past few weeks." Or so the footage he'd been provided had shown.

"She's been helping me," Tyler replied, confirming what Klaus had already known. He opened his mouth to say more, to explain the similarities to going through transitions alone, but quickly shut it again, not sure he should give Caroline's vampirism away. "Why her though?"

"You'll find, Tyler, that I find needless questions to be an annoyance that has me rethinking the gifts that I'm offering," Klaus told him, gaze cutting into the boy. There was a spike of fear, Tyler's muscles tightening as he rose to his feet as Klaus motioned him forward. "Either you do what I want or you can try enduring the next full moon on your own. I do so hope the chains you'll find hold better than your uncle's." He headed toward the doorway, trying to hold back his amusement as the pup hurried after him. "Didn't he escape the last time he was in town?"

Tyler might have concerns about what he wanted done, but Klaus highly doubted that the boy wouldn't take him up on his offer. "You can go that way if my hospitality is no longer to your liking," Klaus continued, motioning down toward the hallway that would lead to the front door. "Or head that way and meet the pack if you're ready to accept my terms."

Klaus smirked as the boy headed down the hallway toward the backyard where the pack waited to welcome him with open arms. He watched Tyler disappear out the backdoor, took in the beginnings of the introductions before heading the opposite way.

Another piece was placed perfectly into place, but there was still much to do to secure the town of Mystic Falls. Klaus didn't particularly care for the place, the lingering memories that he did have of the place were tainted by the abuse he'd endured and Henrik's death. But pulling Caroline from it anytime soon didn't seem to be a worthwhile option and the place did have enough magic in the roots of it that capturing that power for himself would be beneficial in the long run.

There had to be a reason that he had not only been born on this land, but also regained his memories, broken the curse his mother had placed upon him, along with Caroline being born there and regaining her memories there as well. Klaus knew better than to believe in coincidences when magic was involved. There was a reason everything revolved around this area and Klaus wouldn't rest until he knew why.

But first he had a voicemail to leave.

* * *

Caroline and Bonnie were headed into the courtyard of the school with Jeremy to talk about everything when the rest of the student body that was moving about suddenly fell quiet. It didn't take long for them to spot the reason for the silence-Sheriff Forbes, a distraught Jenna, and their principal were in the doorway to the school. They scanned the area before their gazes fell on them and the three headed over to group.

Caroline and Bonnie exchanged subtle looks, already knowing what it was probably about, and from the way Jeremy's shoulders sagged it was obvious that he knew as well. Caroline hadn't been entirely sure if he'd known, though he must have guessed the outcome because Jeremy had been in the loop with everything doppelganger related and his sister had never come home.

Seeing Jenna breaking down in front of them even as she tried to hold it together while walking back into the school with Jeremy was heartbreaking. Knowing about Elena's death, seeing their friend dead had been awful, but seeing how much it tore apart an already destroyed family made the whole situation even worse.

The two girls followed the principal and Caroline's mother into the school, away from the now murmuring crowd. The adults were all quietly talking among themselves as well, words about counseling and assemblies being shuffled back and forth. Alaric didn't join in with the group though, kept to the back with his gaze downcast, all of the fight seemingly drained out of him.

Bonnie took hold of Caroline's hand, squeezing it tightly as the two of them were led into the counselor's office where they found Matt already waiting. They have both seen him cry before after the revelation of his sister's death, but seeing him doing so now over Elena was another reminder that their friend was in fact dead. There was no possible way of denying it anymore, no glimmer of hope that maybe they could find a way to bring her back.

Elena Gilbert was gone and she was never coming back.

Liz didn't leave the room, staying behind Caroline's chair with her hand resting on the back of it. The counselor was talking, discussing methods of coping with grief, of mourning as Bonnie's father finally arrived. There would be no one coming for Matt though, no one knew where his mother was at for the moment.

Caroline reached over and took hold of his hand as well, squeezing it tightly when he gripped it back. Love for him still lingered inside of her, but it was so much fainter than it used to be a few weeks back. She wasn't even sure that she could really classify it as love when she could remember what love felt like in a past life. But she still cared for Matt and seeing him hurting wrenched her heart.

She knew the pain he was feeling, the sensation of not being able to breathe, of his heart constricting to a point where it seemed like it might stop beating altogether. It was an anguish that couldn't be shaken, only endured. There was no guarantee for how long it would last and unfortunately a relapse could happen at any time.

"You're going to come stay with us until we can contact your mother," Liz told Matt as the counselor finished up and he was hardly in a position to disagree.

Caroline wasn't sure he'd be able to walk without the support she offered as they moved down the hall. Bonnie's dad and her mother spoke for a few moments and that conversation ended with Bonnie heading home with her as well. Caroline was grateful for that because the realization over Elena was finally sinking into the two of them and Caroline didn't want her friend to be alone to deal with the loss, she didn't want to go through the pain of it all on her own either. Having one another would make it easier to breathe through the tears.

The trip back to her house seemed to take forever and yet also went by quicker than she'd ever managed before. Matt ended up on the couch, blanket wrapped around him and Caroline worried about the almost vegetative state he fell into on the way to her house.

"I'm going to call the station. Take off for the rest of the day," Liz murmured as she looked over at Caroline and Bonnie sitting at the kitchen table.

Neither of them had spoken-something very uncharacteristic for her daughter-the shock and pain obvious in the way the two clung to one another's hands. "Why don't you two go lay down for a bit?"

It worried Liz how easily the two of them followed that suggestion, heading down the short hallway and disappearing into Caroline's room. Ritualistic killing wasn't supposed to happen in Mystic Falls. Not anymore. Not since the implementation of the Council over a century ago. It definitely wasn't supposed to happen to someone as young as Elena Gilbert. The fact they didn't have a name for the other dead one disturbed Liz, but it was the empty space in the ring of three that bothered her most. Someone else died and they didn't know who it was or where the body might have gone. Or if the body had walked away reborn as a new monster.

Neither scenario was a good one.

But one thing Liz Forbes did know was that whatever monster had perpetrated this crime wasn't going to hurt another human being on her watch if she could help it and she would do whatever she could to ensure no one else died from supernatural causes.

Caroline waited for her mother to start talking on the phone before turning to look at Bonnie. She wondered if she looked as pale as her friend did, the reality of everything finally crashing down onto them.

"I looked again through Gram's grimoire," Bonnie murmured as she tucked her hands under her chin while staring at the ceiling. "There was one spell for bringing someone back." She shifted to look over at Caroline. "I don't have the power to do it though. Maybe if Grams and I had started working on my magic earlier or if I had a coven to draw from but..."

"Bonnie this isn't your fault," Caroline tried to assure her. She reached over, taking hold of one of her friend's hands. "Trying to break the boundary spell took a lot out of you. I don't want to think what attempting to resurrect Elena would have done." Then she would have two dead friends instead of one.

"Elena would be alive," Bonnie whispered and Caroline shook her head, squeezing Bonnie's hand.

"Her life isn't worth more than yours," Caroline told her, voice quiet but adamant. Bonnie didn't respond to that, not that Caroline really expected her friend to, but she'd meant it. Bonnie dying for Elena wouldn't have solved anything. It wasn't like Klaus would have stopped trying to kill Elena, not when her death was the only thing to ensure what he wanted.

"I should have been able to do it though," Bonnie continued after a moment, staring hard at her and Caroline's hands. "I'm a Bennett. That's supposed to mean something."

"It's not like you've really had anyone to help you with any of it since your Grams," Caroline pointed out and Bonnie nodded. "There have to be good witches out there that could help you with that, right?"

"It's just figuring out how to find them." Bonnie sighed before scooting closer to Caroline, needing the comfort her friend's presence offered and figuring that Caroline needed hers as well. "Your witchy Facebook idea is looking better by the minute."

"My ideas are pretty brilliant." Caroline managed a smile at that, pleased when Bonnie briefly reciprocated it. "We'll find you a witchy guru though." Somehow. She wasn't all that sure how to go about it exactly.

"We will," Bonnie murmured. Because Klaus wasn't allowed to win again and something told Bonnie that they hadn't seen the last of him. She wasn't about to be too weak to protect the rest of the people she loved.

Silence fell between the two of them. They lay side by side, hands clasped together as they looked up at the ceiling before quietly whispering to one another memories of their friend and the things they would miss most about Elena Gilbert. And a few of the things they wouldn't miss as well.

* * *

Caroline stared at the ceiling of her bedroom. She had done this countless times before, a tactic she used to help her fall asleep when she was younger even if it never worked. Her mind would get too worked up as she stared, thoughts whirling about her head instead of calming her down like the magazines had always suggested it would. Bonnie laid curled up beside her and she could hear her mother and Matt in their respective rooms as well, all of them fast asleep.

She didn't dare allow herself to close her eyes, knowing what waited for her if she dreamed.

There was only so many times a girl wanted to relive her own death, the chill she'd felt the other night still clinging to her bones. Her mother was already suspicious and Caroline didn't want to add to that or have Bonnie wondering what was going on with her as well. That could lead to Bonnie finding out everything that had happened back at Klaus' estate, to her friend learning that Elena had partially been killed so that Caroline would remember a life she still was trying to deny existed. She was certain that would lead to her friend hating her forever and Caroline wasn't sure that she was ready to deal with that outcome just yet.

But mostly she didn't want to endure the horror of dying again, of simply ceasing to exist as she'd tried to run toward the god she had loved with all her heart. That was something she still couldn't rationalize, how she could feel such affection, so much devotion and passion for a man she didn't remember even knowing until a few days ago. Definitely didn't understand how to come to grips with those feelings stirring for the monster who had killed Elena.

Her body ached for his touch, to curl into an embrace that she knew would comfort her even if she hadn't yet experienced it. She hadn't allowed him to touch her though Caroline had seen the desperation in his eyes, in the way he'd clenched and relaxed his fists to do so. And yet his touch lingered on her skin, ghosted over her flesh in a memory that she couldn't shake.

It was maddening and almost comforting at the same time.

Caroline slid off the bed, careful not to wake Bonnie, before heading over to her purse. It took a minute but she found the phone Kol had given her earlier in the day, the one she hadn't had time to dispose of before, and padded quietly out of her bedroom to do so now. She didn't want anything to do with it, didn't like the idea of being at Klaus' beck and call through the damn thing. It was the fact that it was another dirty little secret that she'd be hiding from everyone she loved that rankled her the most about the phone.

She made it out to the back side of her house, nearly at the trashcan that would be rolled out that morning for garbage pick up when she noticed there was a voicemail waiting to be heard. Caroline nearly disposed of the phone without listening, but while she might not have much experience with Klaus outside of memories that she was still fighting off she just  _knew_  that not listening wouldn't end with him leaving her alone. If anything the bastard would probably show up at her door to deliver whatever message he wanted her to know in person and Caroline definitely didn't want that to happen.

How would she even begin to explain his presence to her mom? To  _Bonnie_?

Sighing in frustration she clicked the button and placed the phone against her ear as she started to pace the stretch of grass that made up her backyard. She hadn't been prepared to hear Klaus' voice, her muscles tightening at the familiarity of it, the longing she'd tried to stifle renewed with a strength that she couldn't push down. The message ended without her knowing what he'd actually said because her focus had been on how hard her heart had started to pound with the simple 'Hello Caroline', eyes clenching shut at the way her name had come out like a promise for things to come.

She  _refused_  to consider what those promises could be.

Caroline sank down onto the grass, pushing her attention back to reality, to focus on the breathing of her friends and mother, anything that would help her ignore how much she yearned to hear Klaus' voice again. Her finger lingered over the delete button, ready to wipe whatever he might have said from her life but she exited out of the screen instead, letting the message save.

She leaned back against the siding to her house, let the phone drop down on the grass in front of her as she listened to the rest of the world around her. Her neighbors were asleep but she could hear the television still running in the McCalister place three doors down. One of the Stenson children was snoring, another coughing while they slept, and somewhere in the distance a cricket chirped. The normalcy of the night helped calm her frazzled nerves and she turned her attention toward the sky, gaze locking on the stars briefly before she picked the phone up again.

A quick scroll through the contacts listed people she didn't know along with her mother's number as well as Bonnie's, but it was the Klaus' name that she kept being drawn back to. She wasn't going to call, couldn't stomach trying to listen to his voicemail again, and chose the texting function instead.

It took a few minutes before she could even figure out what to send, message typed and deleted numerous times before she finally settled on one.

**Caroline:** Don't send your lackeys to give me things ever again.

There. That should convey her displeasure with the phone  _and_  seeing Kol in her town well enough. It was tempting to toss the phone into the garbage then but she knew there would be a reply and while Caroline was already going to be unable to sleep that night, she didn't want to be wondering what he might have replied. That would drive her insane and she was already felt close to dipping over that precarious edge into crazy enough already. She really didn't need another reason to cross that line.

She had expected a text reply not for the phone to start vibrating in her hands, Klaus' name coming up on the screen. She swiped her finger across the screen, rejecting the call.

Caroline could imagine Klaus' frustration with that, picture the way his brows furrowed in confusion before narrowing in anger at her deliberate avoidance. Her nails dug into her palm, trying to shake off the knowledge that she shouldn't have about Klaus Mikaelson but it had taken root inside of her and wouldn't come free.

**Caroline:**  If you have something to say then you can answer me this way or not at all.

Because she couldn't stomach hearing his voice. Not yet, not when her body still pulled at her to find him and cling as tightly as she possibly could to him.

She knew she was playing with fire though, ignoring his call could cause Klaus to show up at her house instead of answering her text. But he'd provided her the phone for a reason, obviously knowing that she wouldn't appreciate the face to face contact just yet so hopefully he would acquiesce to her way of communication.

**Klaus:** I've found that this way of communication leads to misconstrued meanings, love. There are so many ways to read a sentence without knowing the inflection one uses on words.

**Caroline:**  I'm pretty sure you understood what I meant with the first text. Don't have your lackeys deliver me things.

**Klaus:**  So then you would rather I deliver items in person?

She scowled at that.

**Caroline:**  No.

That would definitely defeat her whole avoidance policy that she was working really hard to carry out. At least until their first official...meeting...or whatever the hell it was that she'd agreed to so she could leave with Bonnie.

**Caroline:**  I would rather not get anything at all from you.

**Klaus:**  Pity that. You'll continue to receive whatever I deem necessary.

Caroline narrowed her eyes at that response, scoffing as she reread the text. Who the hell did he think he was?  _Well_ , she knew who Klaus thought he was and who he considered himself in regards to her but like hell did he get to just decide what was necessary or not in her life.

**Caroline:**  Excuse you. There's this thing called boundaries. Learn to use them.

**Klaus:**  There are none when it comes to you and insuring your safety, Caroline.

The phone cracked in her hand, phone beyond repair as her vampire strength crushed it before she regained control.

"So not good," she muttered before dropping the barely recognizable device to the ground.

She located the sounds of her mother and friends breathing once again, tried to let their soft snores center her as she waited for the inevitable. The air whipped up around her far sooner than she'd thought possible and Caroline found herself staring up at the last person she wanted to see.

Klaus' gaze cut into her, somehow furious, concerned and possessive all at the same time. There was another emotion there as well but like hell was she going to give name to that one. She hoped her own gaze didn't reflect it back as she glared up at him.

"You're not supposed to be here," she bit out as she moved to stand. Caroline wasn't about to seem like she was cowering beneath him, pulling on all of her inner strength to hold her head high as she regarded him.

"You didn't respond," Klaus replied. His calm tone belied the rage she could see in his eyes. Yellow flickered to the surface briefly as he looked her over. Caroline didn't like the way her stomach tightened as he did that, dug her toes into the dirt to stop her legs from stepping forward to close the distance between them.

Caroline shrugged when he spotted the crushed phone on the ground between them. "Still getting a handle on the whole strength thing when I'm annoyed." Except she was usually a lot better at it than she had been, but his texts had riled her up easier than anything else ever did. "As you can see I'm perfectly fine so you can leave now."

She had thought that Kol's smile had been dangerous earlier that day but it was nothing compared to the one Klaus offered her now. The other vampire's had a whimsicalness to it while this one was all dark edges, a clear sign she'd poked the beast that lay within him. Her own pushed at her skin, tempted by the darkening of his eyes as he stepped toward her, but she forced it down while trying to stay rooted to her spot.

"Let's get some things clear between us, sweetheart," Klaus started as he took one of her curls in his hand, letting his fingers curl around it. "You continue to reside here because I allow it. You have this freedom because I give it to you. It can all disappear in a heartbeat if I think for even a moment that you're doing anything that might put you in danger." He paused, fingers moving to stroke her neck as caught her gaze with his own. The gentleness of his voice contrasted sharply with his words and Caroline's breath caught in her throat as she listened to him. "I kept you locked away from the world before, bided my time until you came to your senses, and I have no qualms with doing so again."

Fury ignited inside of Caroline at his words, the ancient goddess she'd been striving so hard to deny searing into her bones at his audacity to think he could control her in that way ever again. She grasped his wrist before he knew what she was doing, smiling sweetly as she heard it crack before pushing him off her.

"Try it and I guarantee it won't go at all like you're expecting," Caroline hissed. Maybe she was Persephone reborn but that had been another life, another time, and what had worked once before wouldn't garner the same results now. "You're not welcome here. Not with my mom and my friends-people I actually care about without any weird cosmic voodoo happening-sleeping on the other side of this wall. You need to leave. Now."

Klaus glowered at her, the yellow back in his eyes as he pulled out a new phone from his pocket. "I suggest you do not break this one, Caroline, or we'll be seeing which one of us truly knows how much time can alter one's perception of their captors." He held it out to her and she lifted her chin a little higher.

Caroline didn't want to take it but she also knew that he probably knew far better than she did how time could skew things. "Like I said, you need to leave." Because her anger might be winning out for the moment but she could feel that need to curl her body against his trying to edge its way back out. She needed the distance between them again.

He reached to touch her hair again but she swatted at his hand and shifted, not willing to allow it. "I'll see you on Friday after school for our first meeting," Klaus told her. "I'm sure you can find your way back to  _our_ home."

She didn't answer, simply glowered at him and the use of that word. That place had nothing to do with her and never would if she could help it. "Unless you would rather I pick you up?" Klaus asked and she despised the amusement in his tone at that suggestion. "No? Pity. I'll see you Friday, Caroline."

He was gone before she could answer.

Caroline glared at the spot Klaus had stood in for a long moment, her anger nearly overwhelming. It was tempted to trash this phone as well but one impromptu dealing with Klaus was more than enough. It was going to take her days to process what had just happened and how she was going to deal with having to see him again at the end of the week. She wasn't sure she could actually handle another visit like this one and be able to actually walk away from him at the end of it.

She took a few shaky breaths before forcing herself to walk back inside. Caroline stashed the phone in her purse before curling back up on the bed beside Bonnie, focusing on her friends' and mother's breaths again as she continued to fight off sleep.

If only she could forget the flash of hurt she'd seen in Klaus' eyes when she'd pulled away from him, refused to let him touch her.

That really shouldn't bother her as much as it did. And yet she couldn't quite shake the regret and guilt she felt for denying him her touch. If her body ached as much as it did for him in the last few days she could only imagine how much his craved her over the last thousand years.

Elena's smiling face caught her eye though and Caroline pushed all of her other thoughts and feelings down, trying to hold onto the fact that Klaus was a monster and had killed her best friend. Nothing would ever change that. No amount of words, no amount of old memories rushing to the surface.

She was simply going to hold onto remembering that...and ignore the little voice in her head trying to remind her that she was a monster too.

 


	7. Chapter 7

_Everyone wants to be the sun to lighten up everyone's life,_  
_but why not be the moon,  
_ _to brighten in the darkest hour?_

**unknown**

* * *

The problem with not sleeping was that it wasn't easy to do. Being a vampire lessened the need a bit, but Bonnie was still staying at her place, sleeping in the bed beside her. Matt had taken up residence on the couch, the whereabouts of his mother still unknown, and her mom was right down the hall. Caroline couldn't exactly head outside for lengths of time every night without them worrying. Trying to do things in her room proved futile because the littlest movements were waking up Bonnie now, even the light from her phone was enough to cause Bonnie to grumble.

Staring up at the ceiling was doable for only so long before the tediousness of it would cause her body to start to pull her toward sleep. She'd managed to feed from a bunny earlier that day-something Caroline hated doing-but the lack of blood was lessening her ability to stay awake. The emotional turmoil of the last few days was bound to catch up with her strengthening the need for her body to rest.

Elena's funeral was finally the breaking point. Watching her friend's casket be lowered into the ground as she clutched Bonnie's hands and listened to Matt sobbing beside them had been overwhelming. Her gut had twisted at the sounds of each of his cries, at the utter heartbreak she'd gotten from him. They hadn't broken up that long ago and maybe she should have felt bitter over the feelings he obviously still harbored toward Elena but his sobs, his devastation, only pushed memories of her past love to her mind. If Matt was this distraught over someone he'd loved for handful of years she could only imagine the pain Hades had felt upon losing her.

That knowledge twisted inside of her, bones aching again to head off to Klaus' house, to assuage the suffering he'd endured for the last thousand years. But then she'd looked at the casket being lowered into the ground and hadn't been able to move, remembering Elena and how much she had cared for her friend.

Even now she laid on her bed, Bonnie snoring softly beside her, and tried to focus on Elena, hoped that doing so would keep the nightmares away. Maybe if she did fall asleep she'd dream of her friend instead of dying. Anything would be better than remembering how she'd become nothing.

Focusing on the ticking of the clock in the living room was a mistake, the continuous pattern of it lulling her body into resting, eyes drifting closed.

She didn't even realize she was asleep until she found herself running through the field again, screaming Hades name. Her feet hurt, head pounding, as she remembered the pain of seeing her mother die in front of her, fear freezing her usually vibrant soul as she ran toward the Underworld. Every step seemed to be taking her further away from it though, the path longer than she'd remembered.

And then there he stood, arms outstretched toward her, beckoning her home, and she quickened her pace, reaching out toward him. Her fingers nearly touched his before a scream pierced through the air causing Caroline to freeze as the scene in front of her shifted, showing Klaus draining Elena dry.

"No."

The comfort she'd been looking for disappeared, dread taking over as she shook her head, trying to step back from the scene, to erase it from her mind. "How can you want him?" Bonnie's voice echoed from her right, the condemnation she heard in her friend's voice having her scramble back faster.

"Monster," her mother bit out from her left and Caroline looked over, flinching at the hate she saw in her mother's eyes at the stake Liz was lifting toward her, ready to strike.

"Mommy no."

She stumbled backward, tripping over her own feet, and screamed as the stake plunged through her chest, her mother's satisfaction over killing her worse than the actual blow.

Caroline woke with a start, gasping for air again, and kicked at the covers that were tangled around her feet. She couldn't take being held down like that right then, not with the images in her head still so vivid. "Caroline?" Bonnie asked, still half asleep as she rolled over to look at her friend.

She forced her head to clear once she fully took Caroline in and reached over to place a gentle hand on her arm. Caroline flinched at the sensation, falling off the bed in her haste to get away from the touch. She scrambled back to press into the wall, trying to force her body to calm down, to get a grip on her control that was still out of reach.

"Caroline!" Bonnie pushed the covers off her body and was on the floor in front of her friend in seconds, trying to figure out what was going on. The last time she'd looked like this had been back at that house, after she'd been alone with Klaus.

"What did he do to you?" she murmured, her voice barely audible as she tried to rest her hand on Caroline's arm again, thankful that her friend didn't flinch away that time.

Caroline shook her head and pulled her legs up to her chest, pressing her cheek against her legs as she tried to regulate her breathing. At least her mom hadn't woken. There was no way Liz would buy any of her excuses if she saw her like this again. "You can talk to me, Care," Bonnie urged but when Caroline didn't reply she simply shifted to sit beside her friend against the wall.

_I can't_ , Caroline thought as she held tighter onto her legs. Her friend would never forgive her if she knew what had happened with Klaus, what was still happening between them, or what might happen in the future. And Caroline wasn't quite ready to lose Bonnie just yet.

Or her mom.

She was simply going to need to deal with all of it on her own. If she could run cheerleading, numerous school and town committees, while still maintaining her 4.0 gpa then surely she could handle dealing with a past life and all that entailed just fine as well. Right?

She had to. Failing to do so wasn't allowed.

* * *

The downside of conquering a new territory-or in the case of Mystic Falls taking the reins back-was the need for tedious meetings with the so-called prestigious groups. They were nothing like the Mikaelsons had dealt with in the past, the charm and opulence of the various courts no longer adhered to as it had been. Klaus knew that irritated Elijah to no end, seeing the old ways brushed aside for a newer, less civilized display of power.

This one had the rather common name of 'Founder's Council', one that they'd both heard more than a few times while traveling across North America. The unoriginality of the Mystic Falls' group wasn't that surprising once Klaus and Elijah were actually in a room with them.

It was a simple enough concept, a group of citizens from the various founding families of Mystic Falls that most believed officiated all the commemorations of the quaint little town. Such a lovely little front for the dark, seedy dealings that the group truly dealt with. There were many quite like it throughout the world, all made up of humans who were privy to knowledge of the supernatural but didn't seem to quite understand their unimportance in the grand scheme of things. They believed they held power, that they could contain or wipe out vampire threats to their communities.

Occasionally they would succeed for a few years, actually manage to kill off a number of vampires, but those were either newly turned or highly idiotic ones who hadn't deserved eternity in the first place. The ones with actual witches among the chosen members were far more difficult to deal with than those without, but it seemed that the Bennett line had chosen to stay clear of the Council's business. Or at least those in that family who actually held any real power.

Klaus looked around at the gathered group, listened to the prattlings of the high ranking officials who he'd so easily obtained control over in the last month. A few choice compulsions here and there had easily done the trick, Elijah securing them the needed seat to sit in on the actual meetings so they could alter plans however they saw fit.

There was only one member who hadn't been given the same treatment and Klaus finally rose from the chair he'd been reclined on when she entered the room. He had seen Liz Forbes a number of times in the last few days and her picture had been part of Caroline's file, but this would be the first time the two would truly meet face to face.

"Hello Sheriff Forbes," Klaus greeted, dimples out on display as he stepped into the woman's path. A bit of charm had been enough to intrigue Carol Lockwood when he'd accompanied Tyler to the Lockwood estate earlier, securing her to his line of thinking without needing to use any compulsion. "I've heard so much about you."

"Funny, because I have no idea who you are," Liz Forbes replied, back straightening as her senses screamed danger at her. She had no idea who this man was or why he was at the secret meeting for the Founder's Council. He shouldn't have been there, that much she did know.

"There you are," Carol interrupted as she made her way over to the two of them, hand clasping Klaus' arm as she practically preened against him. "Liz, this is Klaus Mikaelson. His brother Elijah is over there." She waved in his brother's general direction and Klaus watched as Liz took note of him as well, suspicion only seeming to grow in the woman's eyes. "They're Mikaelsons. The family moved out ages ago but they were always part of the Council before that."

"I don't remember ever reading anything about a Mikaelson family," Liz started as she looked back between him and Carol. She might not have been Demeter, no trace of the goddess meandering through her veins, but the way her brow knitted as she tried to determine what was going on had Caroline written all over it.

"Not surprising considering you're only privy to the entire thing because of marriage and then your responsibilities as Sheriff, Liz. There were bound to be aspects you don't know about," Carol replied before sighing. "Excuse me for a moment."

There was another look passing on Liz's face, one he knew all too well that Persephone had always used when she was annoyed with someone for not giving her the credit she was due. The fury that usually accompanied it was one that he quite enjoyed watching being taken out on the unsuspecting idiot who dared think to discredit her.

"What brings you back here then, Klaus? What is that anyway? Germanic?" Liz asked, and Klaus grinned at the scrutinization. No, she might not have been Demeter but he could definitely glimpse the pieces of this woman that were embedded in Caroline now.

"My family and I decided to take some time to get back to our roots. Not quite the splendor that we're used to but this town does have its charms," Klaus replied as he took one of the offered brandies being walked about. Liz waved off the server after a moment, clearly confused by the presence of one at the meeting. "Our parents preferred to stick to older names when they were choosing for us."

Liz nodded as she listened to him while still subtling taking in everything that was happening around them. "How long will you be staying?"

"As long as is needed for my family to be complete again," Klaus replied before tipping his glass to her, amused that his answer obviously rankled her. "I doubt it'll be too long, Sheriff. Or should I call you Liz?" No, he didn't think she would like that at all.

"That's fine," Liz replied and Klaus sipped his drink to not grin at how much effort it had obviously taken the woman to say that. "Though hopefully it won't take your family long to find whatever is missing. I hear the charm wears off after a while if you're used to big cities."

"As I said I doubt it will take too long. I can be rather persuasive when I need to be," Klaus grinned at that and handed off his finished glass. "But don't let me keep you from talking to who you need to tonight. My brother and I are simply here to do the meet and greet. Carol's idea." With a little persuasion on his part.

Liz nodded and Klaus watched her go before looking over to Elijah and nodding. He slipped out of the room, thoroughly done with the unoriginal power plays happening inside of it. He had learned what he needed from the lot of them and with this extra time at his disposal there was a chance he might catch the tail end of cheerleading practice. How could he possibly miss out on that?

Hopefully Caroline wasn't straying from her usually tightly kept schedule.

It'd be such a pity if he had to eat one of her squad because she wasn't where she was supposed to be.

* * *

"You'd think I'd do more than just sit there for the hour. I'm a talker. Like I talk to just fill in silences that don't need to be filled," Caroline muttered as she joined Bonnie outside of the counselor's office. She was doing her usual talking deal right then, a perfect example of her usual need for chatter. "But they want me to talk about Elena and I just...freeze up."

She couldn't articulate a damn thing when the counselor prodded with leading questions. She'd done a few sessions back when her parents had first divorced but those had ended quick enough because she'd displayed normal adapting behaviors. Caroline didn't think she was doing well at all this time. Ms. Timbers was jotting down too many notes, making little faces of concern far more often that Caroline liked.

"I'm not doing much better," Bonnie sighed as the two sat down on the bench outside of the office. It was Matt's turn and Caroline could already hear him beginning to sob inside the room. He was behaving normally, meeting all of the telltale marks that the counselors were looking for.

But Matt didn't know the whole story, was blissfully unaware of everything that Bonnie and her knew. His grieving wasn't being messed with by the knowledge that they had.

"Lucy finally called me back though," Bonnie told her and Caroline nodded, grateful for the change in topic as well as that bit of news. At least until she looked at her friend and saw the way her shoulders were slumped. Definitely not good news.

Bonnie nodded toward the doorway that led outside before the two gathered their things and headed that way. "I told her what had happened and she said best thing to do was to get out of town. Offered to pay for my ticket to come stay with her," Bonnie continued as they stopped in the courtyard.

The sound of the squad practicing cheers could be heard in the distance, football team working on drills as well. "But we both know that one, my dad would never go for that and two, I'm not leaving you here to deal with this alone."

Caroline bit her lower lip at that. Maybe she could compel Bonnie's dad to let her go. It'd be better if Bonnie was safe somewhere else, wouldn't it? One less person to worry about getting hurt and Bonnie could possibly start over, have a life free from all the drama. That had to be good, didn't it?

"She could help you with your magic though? Even if you just left for a bit? More than anyone else here can help you," Caroline pointed out, trying to sound optimistic about the idea. It fell flat though.

But Bonnie wasn't listening to her anymore, her focus was on the parking lot, eyes narrowed in anger. Caroline followed her gaze and sucked in a breath as she spotted Klaus getting out of his car. "What the hell is he doing here?" Bonnie's voice was tight and Caroline could have sworn that the wind picked up a bit, whipping around them for a moment before dying down again.

Caroline wanted to pull her friend back into the school, to put distance between the two of them and him, but there was little point in even trying. Klaus was already looking their way, no doubt having heard Bonnie's mutterings. Vampire hearing was a bitch like that.

"I don't know," Caroline murmured, knowing she should answer her friend, even if it wasn't necessary. It was normal for her to say something though. Keeping quiet might tip of Bonnie that something wasn't quite right.

Her feet ached to move toward him, arms wanting to hug him tightly against her, but Caroline stifled the response, pushed down all of her urges. She was becoming a pro at that, first with the bloodlust, now with...this longing. She let her anger push forward though, allowing it to wrap around her like a blanket to keep out the other warring emotions. How dare he simply show up at her school. This was  _not_  okay.

Klaus was heading toward them, what could almost qualify as a pleasant smile on his face as he walked. The others in the parking lot might buy into it, Caroline could even hear some of them murmuring among themselves about the hot new guy, but Bonnie and she knew better.  _Dangerous_ didn't quite mean what all of them thought, no doubt liking him to some classic bad boy symbol that they'd seen on TV and read about in books. Klaus really was dangerous. Deadly. A literal wolf in sheep's clothing.

"Let's get out of here," Caroline murmured to Bonnie, not quite trusting herself to be around Klaus with her friend there as well. Bonnie knew her too well, was already worried about her and knew that something had happened between the two of them back at his house. She didn't want to make her friend even more suspicious. She'd deal with Klaus later. "I'm not in the mood for games, are you?"

"Not yet," Bonnie replied as she clasped her hand with Caroline's. She would be soon though, she'd make sure of it. She just needed to figure out her magic.

"Hello, sweetheart," Klaus greeted before they could manage to step away. Caroline bristled at the endearment, eyes narrowed in warning. She didn't need him treating her so familiarly around Bonnie. "And the Bennett witch. Have you tapped into all of that untapped potential yet?" His lips curved into an amused smile as he stopped in front of them, obviously enjoying the fury they were both showing. "No? Pity that. Your ancestors were all quite useful."

"Bonnie isn't yours to use," Caroline bit out before she could stop herself, an unspoken  _she's mine_  flowing between them.

Klaus simply canted his head as he looked her over, enjoying the flashes of Persephone that he could see in her in that moment. Any reply he might have had died as one of the students skateboarding along the sidewalk crashed and fell, slicing open their leg. The smell of blood hit the air and Caroline's eyes darkened almost immediately, fangs out and veins pronounced as soon as the scent hit her. Bonnie was tugging her toward her car in seconds and Klaus watched the two go, confused for a moment on the lack of control Caroline had displayed.

His reports had shown that she had superb control, far better than some vampires that were decades older than her, and yet she hadn't been able to control her reaction at all right then.

"When was the last time you...fed?" he heard Bonnie demand as they started to drive away.

"I can't exactly get to Damon's stash all that easy right now and it's not like I can have blood bags in the fridge with my mom not knowing," Caroline muttered as the car left the parking lot.

Klaus's eyes narrowed as he watched it speed away.

She wasn't feeding. Lack of blood had a whole array of consequences for a baby vampire, ones that could lead to her death if she wasn't careful.

This wouldn't do at all.

The thought of his queen relying on blood bags was maddening to him. It was a step above animals but barely. They were meant to be used when necessary, not as a staple of their diet. Who had been teaching her how to live? Blood from the vein was more potent, allowed their strength to grow, ensured their survival and helped to lessen the need for blood between feedings. Obviously Caroline needed to be shown that she had a wide array of choices to dine from walking all around her.

Klaus turned back toward the other students that were still milling about, a few joking with their fallen friend who was wobbling toward his car. Not exactly top shelf but these ones would do nicely for what he needed.

"I was wondering if you might be able to help me," Klaus started as he walked toward a group of cheerleaders who were spilling out from the field, ready to head home. There were some murmurs about his accent accompanied by flirtatious smiles.

"Of course," one of the girls replied as she stepped forward. "We're all very big on helping."

There was a chorus of agreement and Klaus flashed a grin. These ones would do even better for the smorgasbord he wanted to ensure that Caroline had at her disposal.

* * *

"So are we going to talk about what just happened back there?" Bonnie asked as she finally parked the car.

"I'll go out and hunt bunnies tonight," Caroline assured her as she rubbed her temples. Her face might look normal again but her fangs still itched to drop, wanting to taste blood. Hearing Bonnie's heart beat really wasn't helping either.

"Not that, but yeah, you should do that because you don't want to...have an accident." Bonnie twisted the car keys in her hand, not quite sure how to bring up what she needed to ask Caroline. Her friend had already managed to shake off her worries before, but something had clearly happened between Caroline and Klaus. More than her friend just drinking his blood.

From the way she'd found Caroline curled up against the wall back at that house, to her friend waking up from nightmares that had her shaking just as badly, to the way Klaus had obviously sought her out, calling her sweetheart and Bonnie definitely hadn't missed that little powerplay that had happened between them over her. Something was going on and she wanted to know what it was, worried that Caroline was getting in over her head with the hybrid. She could see Caroline bargaining with him to keep the rest of them safe but she could also see Klaus manipulating Caroline. Hadn't Katherine been able to do so and Klaus was more powerful than that vampire had been.

"I won't have one," Caroline promised. She  _couldn't_  have one. Not with Matt staying over and her mother actually being home more often. She couldn't put either of them at risk. Bunny hunting was going to need to happen again. Maybe she could snag a deer, even if she wouldn't ever be able to watch Bambi ever again.

Bonnie nodded, trying to figure out how to ask what she wanted to know without pushing Caroline away. The last thing they needed was to be separated now. "Oh my god," Caroline gasped and Bonnie followed her gaze out the window and toward her house. "Isn't that your…"

"Mom?" Bonnie's eyes grew wide in disbelief.

Maybe?

She hadn't seen the woman in years and while this woman looked older, a little harder around the edges, it was definitely Abby Bennett that was standing at her front door talking to her father. Bewilderment turned quickly to elation and then anger, a bitterness enveloping her faster than she'd ever experienced before. What right did that woman have to be at their home? The one she'd left behind so many years ago without a word? Bonnie remembered how hurt her father had been, the worry that he and her grandmother had shared, and then how her dad had slowly pulled away, burying himself in his work when he realized she wouldn't be returning.

Caroline reached over and gently gripped her friend's hand, not sure what to do or say in this situation. She could imagine the shock Bonnie was feeling at seeing her mom, could sense the anger over all those years she'd been gone and squeezed to let her know that she was there for her.

Bonnie's dad had noticed them and headed over to the car, tapping against the window. Bonnie ignored it for a long moment before finally letting the window roll down. "Hi, Caroline," he smiled at her, but it didn't quite work, not at all like the one he usually offered her. The strain of seeing his ex was obvious in the way his forehead creased, shoulders tenser than she'd ever seen them. "I think we need to have a family meeting. Can you make your own way home? It's just a few blocks."

"Call me later," Caroline told Bonnie after her friend nodded and she slipped out of the car, smiling awkwardly at Abby Bennett before heading home. She tried not to listen in on the beginnings of the conversation between Bonnie and her father, but it was hard not to.

Bonnie obviously didn't want to talk to her mom and Caroline couldn't blame her. Hopefully Abby Bennett wasn't expecting a welcome homecoming because she definitely wasn't about to get one. After how she'd left, Caroline didn't think the woman deserved it. She remembered how Bonnie had sobbed for her mom, how broken she'd been for weeks and then months after her mom leaving.

She stopped at the crosswalk, looking to make sure the traffic was clear. Her home was to the right. To the left was the road that would eventually lead to Klaus' house.

Taking a deep breath, Caroline flashed off to the left. The hybrid and her needed to talk, sooner rather than later, because popping up unexpectedly when she was with her friends was definitely not allowed if she had say in it.

And she most certainly would have one.

* * *

Klaus didn't expect the knock at the front door, definitely didn't expect to hear Caroline demanding to see him when one of his wolves opened it. He knew she would be riled enough to talk to him again because of his appearance at her school, but he'd expected text messages, perhaps an angry phone call if he was lucky. Hearing her voice would have been enough to tide him over until their scheduled meeting in three days, especially with having purposefully run into her earlier, but having her come to him was a definite bonus that he wasn't about to waste.

She hadn't been feeding properly. He'd already set into motion ways to solve that come tomorrow morning, but it couldn't hurt to ensure that she fed tonight as well. He needed to get to the heart of  _why_  she was sticking to blood bags instead of doing what came naturally to vampires. Might as well use this impromptu opportunity to investigate a little.

He leaned against the archway, watching his fierce love glare at the wolf, ready to unleash a verbal slaughtering before she spotted him. Klaus waved the man off, amused at the relief that swept through the man has he hurried away. " _You_ ," Caroline started, practically shaking with rage as she stepped further into the house, her gaze locked with his.

"Hello, Caroline," Klaus greeted as he pushed himself off the wall and clasped his hands behind his back. Having her this close again, without her little friend at her side, made not reaching out to touch her difficult, but he could tell that his mirthful demeanor was irritating her enough. He'd keep his hands to himself. For now.

"Don't you 'hello Caroline' me," she gritted out as she strode toward him. She nearly jabbed her finger into his chest to punctuate the words but pulled back when she stopped in front of him. There was a familiarity to doing that gesture that she wasn't quite ready to acknowledge or deal with just yet.

Caroline settled for crossing her arms, needing to keep her hands where she had better control over keeping them off of him. "You do not come to my school. You do not talk to Bonnie. You definitely don't say crap about her being  _useful_  for you," Caroline continued, needing to get all of it out as quickly as she could. "She's not yours to use. She's  _mine_." The ferocity behind that word frightened her a bit, but Caroline knew she meant it. She was claiming Bonnie Bennett and that meant that Klaus wasn't allowed to touch her...not that she wanted to know how she knew that's how things worked with him. She was so not looking too closely at any of this.

Later on she would.

Maybe.

"Are we clear?"

_This_  was his Persephone reborn. He'd glimpsed her before in Caroline but she'd been so frightened, so confused by everything that was happening, that the fierceness he was used to from his goddess hadn't quite shone through yet. She'd been much like when he'd first abducted her from the world above, terrified and uncertain of what to do until that backbone she'd always had pushed at her to be the queen he knew her to be.

"It seems we have a few matters to discuss," Klaus turned from her, knowing that would infuriate her to no end, and headed down the hallway.

"To have a discussion would mean that you actually have something meaningful to say. Which you  _don't_  because you don't get a choice in coming to my school or talking to Bonnie. You're like a billion. I'm sure you know what _off limits_  means." And yet she was following after him even as she talked, glowering at his backside. Which she was  _not_ checking out. Nope. "My friends, my mom, the places I hang out are all off limits."

Klaus held open the door, further amused by the fact that she walked inside even as she ranted at him. "Afraid I can't acquiesce to that request, sweetheart," he told her, enjoying the way her gaze cut to his, happy to earn her ire. "Elijah and I have secured ourselves seats on your town's delightful little council. I've already rerouted quite a bit of resources here, gotten my wolves to settle down as best they can-such an antsy little bunch. Not to mention that I quite enjoy what I've managed to do so far with our house. The gardens are coming along nicely though I'm certain they would enjoy your touch."

Caroline's mind whirled at all of that information-from the fact that he was apparently setting down roots in  _her_  town to the talk of the gardens. That tugged violently at her heart, causing a chasm of yearning to shatter through her at what she'd lost when she'd died. Flowers no longer bloomed under her feet, seeds didn't grow because she willed them. Spring didn't belong to her anymore and that  _hurt_  in ways she hadn't even realized until now.

Klaus hadn't expected the sudden flash of grief that seemed to fall over her at his words, the devastation that encompassed her features, shoulders sagging a bit over something he'd said. He wasn't supposed to touch, but she looked so lost in that moment that he couldn't help but bring a hand to her face and brush his fingers gently against her chin. She leaned into the touch, eyes almost closing, and the need to pull her closer nearly overwhelmed him.

Caroline pulled away almost instantly though, coming back to her senses and stepping backward. "No touching," she ordered as she swatted his hand away.

Klaus' temper flared at that, angry that she was pushing away his touch, his need to comfort her when she so obviously needed it. Her stubbornness was a trait he could do without at the moment. "Why, when it's obvious that you need it?"

He watched her clench her hands at that but it was the flicker of worry in her eyes before she resumed her glaring that had Klaus knowing he was right in his assumption. "I don't need anything from you," Caroline scowled and headed further into the room so she could put more distance between them. She never should have come there. Why hadn't she simply texted him?

Because there was only so long that she could deny her body and mind what it so desperately craved, especially when she was warring with blood lust and her emotional state. Having both working against her at once was not helping her make rational decisions.

"And yet here you are," Klaus remarked as he closed the door and followed her into the room. He watched her walk around, rubbing her arms as she moved while slowly taking in bits and pieces of what was displayed. "You have the phone I gave you, Caroline. Why not simply use that to inform me of all that you believe I'm unable to do in our town?"

"This isn't your town," Caroline snapped as she stopped moving. He really needed to stop with the whole  _our_  thing that he had going on.

"You'll find that I was here first," Klaus pointed out.

She rolled her eyes at that, before turning her attention back to the room. "Yeah, see, you left so that forfeits any right you used to have to claim this place."

Klaus settled down onto the couch and watched as she looked around. "The world is ours, Caroline. Everywhere I step belongs to me." She still hadn't left which only furthered his belief that his intuition about her was on track. Part of her wanted to be there, sought him out. It was that part he needed to sink his hooks into to draw her even closer.

"No it doesn't," Caroline muttered as she took in the various paintings that hung on the walls, the sculptures from different time periods neatly displayed on tables. It reminded her a bit of the Lockwoods place or the small museum about the founding of the town, but there were pieces displayed that were far older than anything she'd seen in either place.

Klaus had seen so much, lived so long, and an eternity still lay out before him. Before her as well even if she had a harder time wrapping her head around precisely what eternity meant.

"The world has always belonged to those with power, Caroline," Klaus told her, unsurprised by her disagreeing with him. She was so young, even with Persephone unlocked, and with the skewed way the youth of society seemed to view the world today...well, it was to be expected. "And there is none with more power than me." Not even his siblings could compare to him. Though if he had his way Caroline would be his equal, or as close as he could muster for her. Otherwise there would always be the worry of her death over their heads and Klaus would not endure losing her another time.

The world wouldn't survive that happening.

Caroline had stopped moving though and from how rigid her stance had become Klaus didn't think she was even listening to him any longer. He stood up, curious as to what had sparked such a reaction in her. He glanced around once he was at her side, trying to figure out what it was that had captivated her thoughts so thoroughly.

It took a second for him to notice that she was staring at the flower in the vase. Out of everything in the room it was the only thing beside himself that was tied to who she had once been. His estates always had this particular flower somewhere in them if he planned on staying for any length of time. It helped him keep her alive when all he'd had were memories.

"Narcissus." Klaus plucked it out from the vase before holding it out to her. "More commonly known around here as the daffodil but I've always prefered the former name."

Caroline didn't dare move as the memory of the first time she'd seen that flower rushed over her. She'd been captivated by them, couldn't help but wander a little farther from home to try and gather some. Then the world had opened up around her, chaos and darkness surrounding her as he'd burst forward to take her away. Fear and intrigue had engulfed her as her pretty new flowers were ruined.

She flinched away from the flower now, stepping backward from it and Klaus, uncertain when he'd gotten so close to her. His scent invaded her space, fingers digging into her palms in order to keep from reaching out to him, to the safety and love that he offered.

_No_. She couldn't think like that, wasn't supposed to associate those two characteristics with him at all. Not even with the concern in his gaze as he watched her now. Especially not when it was mixed with a promise of something more, of something she wouldn't be able to disentangle herself from if she accepted it.

The step he took toward her was enough to send her careening backward, putting more distance between them. Coming to his house had been a mistake. She wasn't ready to be around him yet, hadn't given herself enough time to build up the barriers she'd need to deal with him.

Klaus could see the moment when fear finally got the better of Caroline, from the way her gaze darted between the flower and him to how her knuckles were nearly white from how hard she was clenching her hands. He usually welcome that kind of reaction from others, the smell of their terror at being in his presence a high he would never get enough of. Klaus didn't want it from her though, despised how it looked on her, how that damn emotion kept her from his side, from where she belonged.

"I need to go," Caroline murmured even as she was already turning to leave.

He wanted to soothe the apprehension from her and if that didn't work then rip it away, tear those walls down until there was nothing left to hide Caroline from him. Taking her from this damn town, locking her away in one of his estates where it would be only the two of them and a small compelled staff to do his bidding was looking far more enticing with each step she took back from him. It took all of his will power to let her leave, to watch her walk away from him all over again.

Pieces were already in play though, parts that needed to be seen through if he was to obtain true immortality for her as well. That was far more important than being able to stroke her hair, to bury himself in her scent, and relearn her body.

Klaus needed Caroline to be as invulnerable as he was and he would wait, coax her to open up to him and chip away at all of her reasons for continuing to leave until he managed that. Once that happened all bets were off. There would be waiting when she was unkillable.

His patience only held for so long. She'd be reigning with him whether she was ready or not.

* * *

"Bonnie!"

She ignored her father, not caring that he was yelling after her, and continued to walk out of their house and away from the woman who had abandoned them but was suddenly wanting to be around. She didn't care what Abby Bennett had to say- _refused_ to think of her as her mother anymore. Her grandmother had been more of a mother than that woman ever was.

She hadn't expected her dad to actually follow her out of the house and down the driveway. He'd never done that before but she stopped when he clasped her arm. "Honey," he started but she shook her head, too angry to take in that almost soothing voice.

Maybe he could be suckered by Abby's apologies but she wasn't going to be. "If she cares so much about her family then where was she after Grams died?" Bonnie glanced back at Abby then, narrowed her eyes at the woman standing on the front porch, watching the two of them. There was no hint of remorse there at all so Bonnie wrenched her arm out of her dad's grasp. "I'm going to be at Caroline's until she's gone."

He sighed, clearly exasperated but let her go. "Let me know you got there safe."

"Sure."

She headed off before he could change his mind, stuffing her hands into her jacket pockets as she tried to not shake. She was furious, anger wanting to bubble out of her and jumped when she walked by the electrical main and sparks started to shoot out from it. A tree lit on fire on the other side of her and Bonnie took a deep breath, trying to calm her body down as she willed the fire to stop. Of course  _now_  her magic wanted to do something, now when she didn't need it instead of when it might have helped Elena, helped Caroline.

God she missed her Grams.

Her path eventually brought her to Caroline's and lifted the flower pot for the spare key. She didn't need it though as Caroline pulled up a second or so later, looking about as frazzled as Bonnie felt. "Not a happy reunion?" Caroline asked as she got out of the car and pulled Bonnie into a tight hug.

"I want to hate her," Bonnie murmured into her shoulder as she clung to her friend. "But…"

"You love her, even if you don't want to." Caroline exhaled quietly before shifting back a little. "Come on, my mom should be gone for a few more hours and I think we both deserve some liquor."

* * *

Klaus knew he shouldn't be doing this, that if Caroline found out that it might push her even further away than she already was from him. But she had been  _right there_  and he had seen how she longed for his touch and yet still denied herself, she'd been so close and then was gone, out of his reach and he was left aching for her.

He wasn't certain that Caroline knew about a vampire's ability to invade another's dreams. Considering her lackluster feeding habits he wouldn't be surprised if the Salvatores had failed to mention all of the added benefits that came along with the transition. The added strength, speed, and even compulsion were all fairly easy to figure out, many did it by accident in those first few hours, but dream manipulation was one skill that needed to be honed to use it properly.

Klaus wanted to see her again and while Friday would come soon enough, he was well aware that all of those little barriers she had wrapped around herself would still be in place. He had a feeling he'd be less likely to run into those same issues in her dreams. She'd be furious if she knew but he was hardly going to reveal that he had done so.

It was easy enough to slip inside her mind; it was a skill he had mastered long ago, though usually he used it to drive someone insane.

The scene he appeared in surprised him, even if he knew it by heart, having dreamt of the same area more times than he could remember. This had been Demeter's domain and he heard the goddess's voice before actually locating the two of them.

Caroline laughed, and he noted that the clothing she wore was modern, something she'd have been comfortable in as opposed to the garb that Demeter wore. Flowers adorned her hair though, tied into the ringlets that cascaded down her back, crown set on top of her head. A nice mixture of the woman she had been and the one she was today.

Klaus kept to the shadows, content to watch for a moment, pleased that Caroline seemed to be accepting who she had once been in the dreams, that she seemed to accept him at least here by the crown she happily wore. Or at least who he had been before their lives had been upturned.

He didn't expect the scene to take the dire turn that it did, Demeter freezing and then simply gone. Klaus could feel Caroline's terror as she started to run in the direction that would lead to the Underworld.

"Hades!"

Her screams tore at his heart, and he swore when he realized what he was seeing happen.

She was dreaming her death.

"Not again, please," Caroline cried as she stumbled along the earth, pushing herself to reach the safety of their realm. "Hades, where are you? Please."

The sky darkened around them, new stars taking their place in the sky as the gods were blotted out of existence. "I can't take this again. Klaus, please help me..."

Her crying out his name shook him out of his shock and he manipulated the dream, forced the images away as he strode purposefully toward her and pulled her into his arms. Caroline collapsed against him, thankful that Bonnie and her mother weren't condemning her this time as she clung desperately to Klaus.

"Shh, it's me, you're safe," Klaus murmured as he breathed her in. He stroked her hair as he continued to manipulate the world around them, nearly turning it into the room he'd made for her at their house but settled on their chambers in the Underworld instead. She sobbed against his chest, hands curling into his henley as her body shook with a mixture of relief and fear.

Anger wanted to overtake him, the irritation of her having endured this in her dreams and having not told him about it nearly overwhelmed him, but he focused on having her in his arms, on how light she was as he lifted her up and carried her over to their old bed.

Klaus settled them down on the mattress, pleased that Caroline wasn't trembling as hard any longer and yet she still held onto him, not quite ready to let him go. He watched her eyes close, body relaxing completely against him as he continued to stroke her hair, to relish the feel of her curled up in his arms, just as he'd remembered. He breathed in her scent, noting the similarities and differences to how it had once been, the hint of springtime remaining even if she no longer held power over that. She fit against him just as he remembered, her cheek pressed against his chest as she continued to breathe in and out as she slowly unwound.

"I miss you," Caroline breathed out before he was pushed out of her mind as she woke.

Klaus blinked, looking around at the study as he slowly came back to reality. The annoyance of her keeping the horrors she was experiencing all to herself was still there, anger at himself for not realizing sooner that her dreaming of her death was likely, but it was all overshadowed by those three simple words.

She missed him. It was amazing how the knowledge of that could cheer him up while simultaneously make him ache for her even more. Patience was a virtue he knew well, one that he usually held a tight reign over, but knowing that she missed him and yet was still not in this house with him was hard to swallow. It tore at him even as he smiled, playing the soft sound of her words over in his head as he headed down to his small studio to try and capture the beauty of his sunshine girl.

He needed some time to think about how to ensure Friday's meeting went off without a hitch and bound her to him even more than she already was.

As well as insure she didn't dream of her death ever again.

* * *

Caroline tried to fight off whoever was waking her up, wanting to stay curled up in the safety of her dream. But whoever was shaking her was persistent and her body could only hold off for so long before she woke with a groan. She rubbed at her eyes, trying to figure out what was going on and ready to give Bonnie and earful about proper bed sharing etiquette when she realized that Bonnie was frustratedly waking beside her.

Whoever she had expected to see, it definitely hadn't been Stefan Salvatore sitting on her bed. She didn't like the way he looked, the slightly crazy gleam in his gaze as he looked over at the two of them. He looked haggard, looked like she had felt after all of those nights of not sleeping properly.

"Stefan?" Bonnie grumbled out as she pushed herself up, trying to make sense of the situation.

Caroline glanced over at her bedside clock. "It's two in the morning."

"Never too early to start planning how to destroy someone," Stefan told them with smile that had filled Caroline with dread. It was too similar to his brother's, reminded her of when Damon had used and abused her, and that was something she didn't want associated with this Salvatore.

Bonnie and her shared a look before focusing their attention on Stefan. Any chance of sleep was definitely gone. "Destroy who?" Bonnie asked before Caroline could.

Not that they really needed to do that. They both definitely knew the answer. There was only one person that Stefan would want to destroy now.

"Klaus."

Having that confirmed wasn't supposed to rip at Caroline's insides like it did, shouldn't have her catching her breath like she did. But it was the cold, dark determination in Stefan's gaze and the edge to his tone that worried her the most.

This could not possibly end well.

 


	8. Chapter 8

_Once hope betrays you, you can't help but let the devil inside._

**K.S.**

* * *

Two little words shouldn't bring her world crashing down around her. Such a simple phrase shouldn't have the power to render her useless for the next few minutes as Stefan went into detail on all the ways he wanted to enact his revenge. But it was like time stopped for her, the world continuing to spin as she tried to figure out a way to make sense of this.

Maybe if she didn't know all that she did, if she hadn't turned out to be Persephone reborn, she might have been all for this course of revenge. Caroline wasn't too sure about that though, not with all of the risks that would go hand in hand with trying to take down someone as powerful as Klaus.

It had been one thing when trying to protect Elena, but their friend was dead and there was no bringing her back. Revenge wouldn't bring about any sense of closure, it'd only bring about more death. Most importantly it would bring about the death of people that she loved and that wasn't allowed to happen.

Not because of Klaus and definitely not because of Stefan.

Caroline focused back on the conversation at hand, knowing she needed to know everything that Stefan wanted to do. Her eyes narrowed as he continued to speak, listening to the various ideas he had to get justice for Elena. Funny how every plan he had come up with seemed to be putting Bonnie's life at risk.

"No."

She didn't mean for the word to come out, inwardly was startled that she had voiced it out loud, but her voice didn't waver, didn't seem at all hesitant as she stared at Stefan.

"No?" He stared at her for a long moment before sighing, his voice getting that placating edge to it that people always seemed to use with children. He even did the annoying smile along with it. "Look, Caroline-"

"No, you're not going to  _Caroline_ me. This is ridiculous. You want the three of us to try and take on Klaus and the rest of them, because yeah, sorry but it looks to me like the others aren't going to turn on him." Not that they knew exactly all that was going on with the others like Kol and Elijah but the interaction she had so far with Kol at least suggested that he was behind Klaus, or at least fine with being his errand boy.

Stefan opened his mouth, ready to offer a rebuttal but Caroline kept on talking, not at all close to finished. "What's the point? So more people can die? So that Bonnie can get injured, because I dunno about you, but like everything you're saying involves Bonnie doing the dangerous stuff and if things don't go according to plan then she's the one who gets caught up in the crossfire." And considering 90% of their plans always seemed to fail, Caroline had a feeling that Bonnie would end up hurt or worse.

"So what, Caroline? We just let Klaus get away with killing Elena? We don't get justice for her?" Stefan demanded as he clenched his hands, glaring at her.

It always seemed to come back to Elena Gilbert. She had been their friend, Caroline missed her and grieved for her, was still mourning her, but she was not about to die for her damn memory. "Why does justice have to be more pain and death? Why can't it be us like living for her?" Why couldn't it ever be something positive? "Because I'm sorry, but do you really think he's just going to let us go up against him? Do you think there won't be consequences with going against Klaus? Did you just forget all you and Damon were able to find out about him?"

"Whispers that we don't know for sure are accurate at all," Stefan bit out, his tentative hold on controlling his temper ready to snap at any second. She could see the tips of his fangs protruding, eyes darkening a little. "Even if they are, he probably won't expect the three of us to do anything against him."

Well, Stefan was right about that. Klaus wouldn't expect Caroline to make a move against him like Stefan wanted. Caroline also knew that she couldn't bring herself to do any of the things that Stefan wanted either. It wasn't like she could explain why that was though, especially not when she wasn't quite ready to admit anything that involved Klaus to herself. But she wasn't so sure that Klaus wouldn't expect Stefan to retaliate. It wouldn't surprise her at all if he was waiting for that to happen while putting into place dozens of countermeasures. Or maybe he would simply stake the other vampire, end him before he could become too much trouble.

She shifted back, shaking her head as she brushed her hands against her blanket. "I loved Elena, but I'm out. I'm not willing to risk my mom." Or her heart.

"Bonnie and I can do this without you," Stefan muttered, and she didn't like the cold look he directed at her. This one was too much like Damon's, too similar to the monster that still haunted her nightmares on occasion, reminding her of when she'd been completely vulnerable. It wasn't at all like the guy who had helped her wipe blood off her face in the bathroom a few months back, the one who had helped her learn how to hunt bunnies. There was no trace of compassion, only a calculating look that made her mentally shudder. But Caroline couldn't let that emotion show either, not when she needed to figure out how to get Bonnie out of this mess as well.

"You would have been a liability anyway," Stefan continued and it took all of Caroline's self control to not respond to that. His attention shifted to Bonnie who had been quietly listening to everything so far. "We'll need to look into your Grams' grimoires. There has to be something in there that we overlooked."

Out of everything he could have said bringing up her Grams was going to be the downfall to Stefan's plan. Sheila Bennett had never wanted Bonnie involved in the vampire mess. It had led to her death and Bonnie couldn't help but wonder if it would one day lead to her own as well.

Caroline had been killed because of vampire games. Elena was dead as well because of them. Lucy had warned her about what could happen and while Bonnie wished she could have helped her friends avoid the pain and death they had all endured, she didn't relish the idea of going up against Klaus now. Not when she was still trying to figure out his interest in Caroline, because something had happened that night of the sacrifice, and she was determined to figure out what and help her remaining friend out.

Stefan's way of doing things would only cause more problems, lead to more deaths, and Bonnie was tired of being involved in the Salvatore's games.

"I'm out too, Stefan," Bonnie interrupted, startling them both. She usually always went along with the plans or at least said she would even if she didn't quite do things how Damon had wanted in the past. But she was finished being the go-to witch. "I'll work on defending us and this town against Klaus but I'm not getting involved in any revenge schemes." Not when she wasn't anywhere near as powerful as her grandmother had been, not with how using a significant portion of magic rendered her useless for hours afterward.

Caroline tensed, watching Stefan closely as she waited for his response. It could go either way with him now and she refused to let Bonnie get hurt in the crossfire. He stared at the two of them, shock giving way to disbelief before anger once again gripped him. Caroline braced herself, ready to protect Bonnie in case Stefan lashed out physically at them.

"You didn't deserve her friendship," he told them, as his lips curled back into a snarl. He was gone seconds later.

Bonnie leaned against her, taking hold of Caroline's hand as they both released a breath, thankful that Stefan had left. It took a second for Caroline to realize that Bonnie had been surrounding them with magic, forcing Stefan to stay at a comfortable distance from them.

Silence fell between them though, the blow of his words lingering in the air, and Caroline wondered how true his words were in regards to her at least. Especially with all that had happened and was still happening, with how she had so easily dreamed peacefully of the monster who had killed Elena, how her body yearned to be near him.

"He's wrong," Bonnie murmured with a gentle squeeze. "Elena wouldn't want any of us getting ourselves killed in her name."

Part of Caroline believed that. Their friend hadn't wanted anyone to die for her, to get hurt so she wouldn't be sacrificed, and they had done all they could to try and save Elena from that fate. They had failed though and that was something they would live with for a long time even if her death wasn't their faults.

"I know," Caroline finally murmured before laying back down, Bonnie curling up on her side next to her.

They both lay there for some time, neither saying a word, as they both replayed the events of the conversation with Stefan over in their heads. "We didn't get to finish talking earlier," Bonnie eventually murmured and Caroline tried to force her body to remain relaxed as her friend turned over to look at her.

"About what?" Caroline asked. Trying to act confused was entirely too similar to lying, something she was never all that good at. "About your mom?" Maybe changing the topic to Abby was kind of a low blow but if it kept the conversation away from Klaus…

Bonnie pressed her lips together at that, eyes narrowing a little as she thought of how her mom had just suddenly shown up out of nowhere. But  _no_  she wasn't going to be distracted by that, not right now. Not when Caroline could be in serious trouble.

"He called you sweetheart."

Caroline swallowed at that, hating that her friend had picked up on that, but outwardly she shrugged. "I think that's a British thing." He had the accent so maybe he went around calling all women by that.

"And the whole I'm not his to use thing?" Bonnie prodded, watching her friend carefully as she tried to figure out what was going on in Caroline's head.

"Well you're not!" Caroline protested as she shifted to laying on her back and fidgeted with the covers, trying to get them to lay like she wanted them.

Silence fell between them again and Caroline hoped that Bonnie was letting it drop, that her friend was going to sleep.

"He went to the school to see you, didn't he?"

Caroline stiffened at that, not really wanting to think too hard on why Klaus had been there. "I don't know." She thought he had but maybe it had been for another reason and running into her had been a nice surprise for him.

"He made it so the two of us were in his house when the ritual took place," Bonnie murmured, recalling all of the little things that had happened. "He gave you his blood and healed you, Caroline. And then you were a sobbing mess. Now he's at our school looking for you and calling you sweetheart?"

Caroline clenched her eyes shut, willing sleep to come, anything to stop this conversation from happening. Bonnie touched her arm and she glanced over at her friend, fearful of what she emotion she was going to see. There was only concern though.

Bonnie didn't know what any of it meant, but she could see that Klaus had some kind of fixation on Caroline. She didn't know why that was yet, but she'd figure it out. She'd stop him. "He can't have you."

Klaus already got Elena and killed her. He wasn't allowed to destroy Caroline too.

She didn't want anything to do with her mother, but maybe Abby would know some tricks with magic to help her be as powerful as Grams had been. Bonnie could handle speaking to the woman if it meant she'd be able to help out Caroline.

Caroline choked back a sob at Bonnie's words and pulled her friend close, hugging her tightly as her vocal chords refused to respond.

She didn't know how to explain to Bonnie that Klaus already had her.

* * *

Rebekah strode through the doors that one of her brother's followers held open for her. "Bring my bags to my room," she told the young wolf as she handed over her keys. "Don't scratch the luggage." She'd so hate to have to rip this one's hands off if they did. Nik got so annoyed when she needed to remind the help of how to properly carry out their duties.

She walked through the foyer and down the long hallway, brushing her hair off her shoulder as she passed by more of the workers. Klaus had taken some of their best with him when he had returned to Mystic Falls, something that had irritated her, but at least they seemed to still be keeping to the standards she'd set in place for them. It was far too much trouble to break in new ones nowadays. The standards that humans these days had for keeping a house in order was far beneath what she was used to.

Canting her head to the side she listened to the happenings in the house, picking out Kol and Elijah's whereabouts first before honing in on Klaus. She'd see to the other to later, but she needed to see him first, wanted to see how he was faring with the apparent appearance of Persephone.

For one thousand years he had been searching for her, always keeping an eye out for the girl who haunted his dreams. It was rather romantic, a kind of love that she wanted for herself, but after so many years she'd truly thought the girl would never appear. Would it really have been that surprising for Persephone to have been reborn far away from them hundreds of years before, dying without Klaus ever knowing she existed? After all, it wouldn't be the first time that fate decided to be cruel to him.

But she was here now, born into the same land they'd all lived on a thousand years ago, and apparently friends with the doppelganger. Rebekah hoped she'd be far more enjoyable than Finn's constant companion.

"Painting again?" Rebekah asked as she entered the room, unsurprised to find that Klaus had created another studio. They seemed to crop up in all of his estates lately. It was the various paintings and sketches that were strewn all over the room that caught her eye though. She had seen this face countless times before up until a hundred or so years ago.

_Persephone_.

Klaus didn't bother to look up from his sketchbook, his focus on perfecting the arch of Caroline's brow. "I have to say," Rebekah continued as she leafed through a few of the sketches on the table. "I like her already if her mere presence has you in such a frenzied state." Usually his studios were in meticulous order, but that was missing completely this time.

She sat down on the couch opposite him. "So when do I meet Persephone?"

Klaus looked up then, scrutinizing her entirely too cheerful demeanor. It was never a good thing for Rebekah to be excited to meet someone, that usually ended with her eating them. "Her name is Caroline."

" _Caroline_." She let the name roll on her tongue, pursing her lips when she was finished. It wasn't exactly unique. "I suppose that will do."

Klaus arched a brow at her before looking back down at his work. "Is she everything you thought she'd be?" Rebekah asked, watching him draw. The quick, yet gentle stroking of the pencil showing the care to which he was working on the portrait. "Though if she was the doppelganger's friend then she must be in high school. She'll have all of these twenty-first century idiosyncrasies that you'll hate. Be all for women's empowerment."

"Is there a point to your incessant blabbering?" Klaus muttered as he glanced her way for a brief moment. "You could have bothered me this way from Italy, Rebekah."

She scowled and leaned back, brushing her skirt down to get out the wrinkles. "Is that any way to greet your favorite sister?"

He smirked at that. "You're my only sister, Rebekah."

She sighed, knowing he was goading her but unable to help falling for it anyway. "Favorite  _sibling_  then."

Klaus grinned then and she knew she had him. "But really, Nik. When do I meet her?" Rebekah asked again. Because she needed to size her up, see how much work she was going to need to put into this girl to insure she could stand with their family. There was no getting rid of Caroline, Rebekah already knew that, so figuring out how to mold her into the girl she needed her to be would have to do.

He put the sketchbook to the side, the sly gleam in his eyes alerting Rebekah to the fact that some kind of plan was spinning around in his head. "Well, favorite sister of mine," Klaus started and she steeled herself at that, knowing she wasn't going to like whatever he was about to propose. He only ever actually stated she was his favorite when he needed something. "I think it's about time for you to try out what modern seventeen year olds do with their lives."

Rebekah stared at him. Clearly he had lost his mind. "I'm not going to high school." She'd end up eating half the school before first period was over.

Klaus simply smiled at her, that annoying knowing one he always wore when he was well aware that it was only a matter of time before she'd give in to whatever it was he wanted. "No." Rebekah looked down at her nails, trying to keep her stubbornness in check.

He could send one of his little wolflings to attend. She wasn't about to do it.

"I need you there, Rebekah," Klaus started. She didn't expect the sincerness in his voice and it caused her to look over at him. "Katerina screwed with me one last time by turning Caroline." Not that the doppelganger would have even known who Caroline was to him but he was still livid. "She's a baby vampire, vulnerable in ways she shouldn't be, and will continue to be until I can get everything I need into place to make her one of us."

"We were supposed to use mother's spell." The same one that had been done to make all of them what they had become. Rebekah didn't relish the idea of attending the monotony that was high school but Klaus losing Caroline would do far more damage than a few weeks of human classes could accomplish on her psyche.

"Fine," Rebekah rose. "But you're taking me shopping for back to school clothes."

She turned on her heel and headed toward the door. "Thank you, Rebekah," Klaus murmured, and she smiled at that. It wasn't often that Klaus thanked anyone.

"Yes, yes," she murmured, shrugging it off as she looked back at him. "We'll leave in an hour."

* * *

It had been a struggle to get the approval to be allowed to attend school again. The counselors wanted her to take a little more time off, to keep on adhering to the grieving process, but Caroline had managed to convince her mom that being  _out_  of school was doing more of a detriment than attending classes where people would look at her pitifully. She thrived on keeping to her routine and being forced out of it with everything else that was going on was driving her insane.

Unfortunately Bonnie wasn't with her, nor was Matt, and Caroline didn't really want to know where Stefan was at the moment. It was probably for the best that he wasn't around. Walking into school without the other two though had been more of a challenge than she'd anticipated, but she held her head high, trying to find the right balance of strength and vulnerability that would be expected from her.

It didn't take long for the rumors to make their way to her and she headed over to Alaric's room. "So you're leaving?" Caroline asked as she watched him put a few more things into the box on his desk. Wasn't he supposed to be a vampire hunter? Shouldn't he be the one staying and helping out with...everything?

Alaric glanced over at her, nodding for her to come in before resuming his packing. "Jenna decided Mystic Falls isn't the place for them to be anymore," he told her as she shut the door. Not with all of the death that surrounded that family there. "They're moving. I'm going with them."

"Stefan hasn't tried to recruit you?" Caroline had been so certain that he would head to Alaric first.

He nearly dropped the book he'd been holding. "I need to make sure Jenna and Jeremy live a long life. It's what Elena would have wanted." Probably not what Damon would have wanted, he'd have preferred revenge like Stefan.

"Yeah, it is." All Elena had wanted was for the rest of them to survive. Not that the girl had wanted to die, but she never wanted them hurt to save her. "Has she picked where you're all moving?"

Alaric closed the top of the box, securing it with tape. "Some town in California."

That surprised Caroline and yet at the same time it didn't. It was about as far from their little town as they could get without crossing a border. Maybe that would be enough distance. "Try to stop by and say goodbye. I know she'd like to see you and Bonnie," Alaric told her as he lifted the box. Even if seeing the two of them might cause all sorts of pain.

"We will," she assured, opening the door for him.

Alaric stopped in front of her. "Caroline, get the hell out of this town as soon as you can. Tell Bonnie that too," he murmured for her ears only before heading out into the bustling hall.

She watched him go, not sure how to feel about his words before looking back at the empty classroom. Everything was ending, the friendships she'd had broken because of death, people leaving that she never quite expected to. With endings came beginnings, but Caroline wasn't ready to venture down the road her new beginnings were set on.

The room felt like it was closing in on her, that tight hold she had on control slipping through her fingers, and she tried to get a handle on it, to keep her perfectly crafted exterior intact as she made her way through the crowd and into the bathroom. Caroline stopped in front of the mirror, silently counting to ten as she tried to calm down. The veins in her face were starting to puff, her monster just below the surface and dying to come out.

Closing her eyes she counted backwards and gripped the sink, forcing it back down.

The sound of people approaching had her looking up and quickly scrambling through her bag to pull out some makeup to fiddle with. Caroline worked at getting her lipliner just right as the door opened, glancing up to see Dana and a few other cheerleaders file in behind her.

They were in front of her in seconds, offering her hugs that she accepted, working to keep up the appearance of normal. It was a cluster of sentences after that, all of them speaking at once.

"It's just so tragic."

"Are you back? Because Whitney is complete crap at-"

"Oh my god, Tiki! You can't just say that!"

"You look famished, Caroline. Do you need to feed?"

Wait. What?

Had Dana just asked her if she needed to feed?

Caroline shook her head. Surely she had heard that wrong. The girl must have asked if she'd eaten breakfast or something along those lines. But then Dana was brushing her hair off her shoulder and arching her neck in what looked like an invitation.

"You can drink from any of us," the girl continued and Caroline looked around in horror as the others tilted their own heads, offering up their necks as well.

"I'm fine," she managed to get out, grabbing her bag and stuffing her lip liner back into it. She needed to get out the bathroom and figure out what was going on.

"We're not supposed to let you go unless you feed," Tiki told her and before Caroline could manage saying anything the girl rolled up her sleeve and sliced into her arm, hissing in pain.

Caroline stepped back at that, eyes widening as the two of the others did the same motion, the scent of blood filling the bathroom. She needed to get out of the room and far away from them, but it had been days since she'd had human blood. The bunny she'd managed to eat the other day wasn't the same at all and with Stefan going crazy the Boarding house bag supply wasn't an option. She was  _starving_ , the bits of alcohol doing little to stave off her hunger.

How was she supposed to resist fresh blood?

Tiki brought her arm up and Caroline hissed at her, wanting the girls to be afraid, to have the smell of fear also mingling in the air. That would snap her out of her hunger, but they were all happily offering up their arms, looking imploringly at her to take a bite.

She grasped hold of Tiki's arm, fangs sliding out as she brought it toward her mouth before sinking them into it. Blood flowed into her mouth and Caroline closed her eyes, moaning at the taste of it, at how divine it was straight from the vein. She nearly lost herself in it, switching from Tiki to the next, enjoying the difference in taste between the girls.

Caroline glimpsed herself in the mirror, eyes dark as night as her monster came out to play. It didn't frighten her like it had only weeks ago. She welcomed it now, yearned for the release that it brought with it.

She stumbled backward after a few minutes, staring at the girls she'd known her whole life. They were all still alive, slumped against one another, but their breaths too shallow for her liking.

"Oh my god." She threaded her fingers through her hair, body shaking in response to what she had done.

Caroline tore into her wrist and went to each of them, forcing a bit of blood down their throats so the wounds on their arms could heal. "I'm so sorry. I didn't…"

"You look like you're feeling better," Tiki murmured with a smile, and Caroline backed up at that as the girls rose, helping one another up. "We're around whenever you need a snack."

Caroline watched them file out of the bathroom before grabbing her discarded bag from the ground and flashing out of the school and as far away as she could manage to get from it. She sunk down onto one of the park benches, thankful that it was deserted at that time of day, and hugged herself tightly.

The guilt she knew she was supposed to feel wasn't coming, no matter how hard she tried to make it start stirring inside of her.

This wasn't good. This wasn't  _her_.

Except she knew it was; it was simply the part she'd worked so hard to control, to suppress the urges to. She wasn't supposed to relish in the taste of blood, to drink from people, from  _her friends_. It was such a slippery slope.

She didn't want to become like Damon, using people for entertainment, abusing those she saw as weaker than her. She never wanted to make anyone else feel as small and vulnerable as she had with him.

But there was no guilt at having eaten part of her squad and Caroline couldn't help but worry that she was already heading down a path that would end with her becoming worse than Damon Salvatore had ever been.

Caroline slowly leaned back, letting her arms drop to her sides as she looked out at the empty park. And  _of course_  today just had to be the day she was supposed to meet with Klaus. He was probably the one behind the girls offering themselves up. Or maybe it was Stefan, some misguided attempt at revenge for her not being willing to help him.

She let her head fall back, resting it against the top of the bench and glared up at the clouds. She bit her lip as she tried to decide how much effort she should put into her outfit for later and then quickly grumbled, annoyed that she was even contemplating that.

It was going to be a long day.

* * *

Bonnie stared at the front door for a long moment, nearly made it all the way to it before turning back around and heading back down to the curb. She groaned, rubbing her hands against her temples. Walking into her own house shouldn't be so difficult. Asking for help shouldn't be such a serious task. But both things would require dealing with her mother and that was something Bonnie simply didn't want to do.

The woman had left them, and while Bonnie had used to think that it had probably broken Abby in two to do so, she didn't think that any longer. Her mother didn't look at all apologetic, not at all heartbroken for losing out on time with her husband and daughter. She looked rested, healthy, and  _maybe_  Bonnie was supposed to see that as a good thing, but it only increased her anger.

But Klaus was still out there. He'd already killed Elena and whatever weird fascination he had with Caroline could definitely end with her dying as well. Bonnie wasn't going to let that happen. So if she had to suck it up and be the bigger person here then she would.

Taking a deep breath she headed back to the front door and continued on into her house. Her dad's car was gone, signalling that he was already at work, and she hoped that Abby hadn't headed off somewhere as well. Luckily she was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea when Bonnie walked in.

"Sweetie," Abby started, moving to rise and head to her.

Bonnie shook her head. "You're a witch, right? Like Grams was. Like me?" It could have skipped her generation but Bonnie didn't think so. Abby nodded, opening her mouth to try again, but Bonnie kept talking. "Good. I'm not here to bond with you. You left, you lost that right to be my mother. But I need to learn magic and you're the only other witch here. So you're going to help me."

Abby settled back onto the chair and nodded. "What would you like to learn?"

Bonnie sat down across from her, fighting back the urge to leave again, to put more distance between them. "Everything."

* * *

In the end Caroline had gone back to her house and spent over an hour trying to find the perfect outfit that somehow managed to make her look gorgeous while also looking as though she hadn't put any effort into choosing it. She went through the same meticulous process with her makeup and hair, redoing both multiple times until it was exactly how she wanted it.

She left a note for her mother to let her know she'd be home later, that she was seeing a friend, and then made the drive to Klaus' estate. Caroline had nearly turned the car back around at least twice but she forced herself to keep driving, knowing that Klaus would end up at her house if she didn't. The last thing she wanted was for her mother to meet him and ask questions that Caroline knew she wouldn't be able to answer.

She didn't hesitate to get out of the car once she pulled up in front of the mansion. She refused to look weak, especially there in his territory. Head held high she walked up the steps and knocked on the door, grateful that someone besides Klaus or Kol answered it. That gave her a few more moments to steel herself for the conversation that would be happening.

Unlike the previous times they had spoken, Caroline didn't think she'd be allowed to simply head off in the middle of the conversation. Not when this one had been begrudgingly planned.

"He'll be down shortly," the man told her after delivering her to a sunroom off the back of the house.

Caroline nodded as she walked around the new room, taking in the windows that encased all of the outer walls, running up the ceiling as well until they touched the side of the house. Beautifully crafted cherry wood furniture with white cushions decorated the room. Splashes of cerulean blue adding color. She drew her fingers along the backs of the sofa as she walked past it, glancing out the windows at the garden that lay on the other side.

She had to look away all too soon, the thought of being around that many flowers causing a bit of panic to stir inside of her. Her attention shifted to the artwork on the wall, taking in the landscape of a waterfall that she didn't know before looking at the framed sketches of the Eiffel Tower and a palace that she couldn't name that hung on either side of it.

"It's the Hampton Court Castle," Klaus informed her and Caroline spotted him leaning against the entryway to the room. She didn't know how to handle how he was looking at her as she stood there in her white sundress with her curls spilling down her back. A quote about hanging the moon and stars flitted through her mind before she looked back at the sketch. "Circa 1603 when Shakespeare and his troupe performed for King James."

Caroline arched a brow at that, unable to help looking at him again. Her breath hitched at how close he'd gotten to her in without her noticing. "You knew King James?"

He grinned, hands clasped behind his back to help stave off the need to touch her, as he nodded toward the sketch. "I've known a great many kings and queens, Caroline."

She rolled her eyes, not sure how else to react to such a statement, and stepped away from him, rounding the furniture to head for the windows that overlooked the garden. He was watching every step she took, and wasn't this what she had yearned for not even a year ago? For someone to want her with the intensity that Klaus seemed to? And yet now she pulled away from it, fearing and anticipating it in equal measure.

"I guess being alive as long as you have means you've kind of done and seen it all," Caroline replied with an almost smile, the thought of that somehow thrilling her and making her stomach churn in discomfort at the same time. How could he have lived for so long and want her?

Oh right. Because by some fluke she was Persephone reborn.

Her smile faltered, tension curling through her spine as that realization hit her head on.

He didn't look at her and see who she was, he saw the goddess he had lost. He didn't actually want  _her_.

The mood of the room turned sour as uncertainty over whether it was something she actually liked or if it was something the memories that stirred inside of her had once enjoyed. "So what are we supposed to be doing now?" Caroline asked as she looked back at him, wanting the evening over with as soon as possible now.

Klaus had noted the change in her demeanor, the dark cloud that seemed to have grabbed hold of her, blotting out any of the almost sunny disposition she'd had. He didn't like the swift shift, ran through what had been said to try and figure out precisely what had done it. This had nothing to do with the dead doppelganger, of that much he was certain. Something else had her putting up walls that had been crumbling moments before.

"I've accomplished a great many things, yes, but it wasn't until recently that I was able to find you," Klaus told her as he waved for her to sit down. He could hear the cart that held the food he'd had prepared for the evening nearing the room.

"Find me and unlock what you wanted," Caroline muttered as she sunk down onto the couch. She smoothed down her dress, hating how comfortable the thing felt sitting on it.

His brow furrowed as he worked to decipher what she meant by that as the cart was wheeled into the room. "I only unlocked who you already were, Caroline." She had always been Persephone, he'd merely managed to enable her to remember that fact.

Caroline scoffed at that. There was no way that statement could be true. She certainly didn't feel like she was a goddess her whole life. Not when her parents' marriage had been falling apart or when she'd dealt with falling out with her friends every now and then. Definitely not when she'd been under Damon's thumb.

Klaus waved off the man who'd brought the cart, not wanting anyone to disrupt the conversation that was happening. It seemed that he had accepted Hades with an ease that Caroline didn't have with Persephone. Perhaps Elijah had been right about the time period they had been brought up in, being surrounded by the supernatural as they had been allowing him to believe wholeheartedly in all of it. Plus he'd had a thousand years to adapt to it all, to get comfortable in his own skin. She hadn't even had a week to do so.

"Then why don't we talk about you?" he suggested as he moved to place the trays of food down on the coffee table in front of her.

"What about me?" It was taking an overwhelming amount of effort to not cross her arms as she sat there watching him. "I'm a forever seventeen year old vampire who lives in tiny Mystic Falls, Virginia. Not exactly a lot of talking points with that."

He shouldn't smile at that, find her irritation to be so amusing. "Then how about your hopes, Caroline? Your dreams? What is it that you want to do, to see?" Klaus nodded at the assortment of fruits and desserts laid out before them. "As you've said you're a vampire. You have forever laid out in front of you." And for her it truly would be forever unlike with most of the others who managed a couple of centuries, perhaps more before dying. "Mystic Falls is not the end of your journey but merely a stepping stone."

She shifted in the seat, flustered by his questions. Part of her wondered if he was asking to see if her answers would be similar to whatever Persephone might have wanted. But mostly she was worried over the fact that she simply wasn't sure what exactly she wanted any longer. College, a good job, the perfect marriage and the two kids in ten year plan didn't quite work anymore.

"I don't…" Caroline picked up a plate and started putting some of the fruit onto it to give herself a minute or two to respond. She licked her lips, knowing he was intently watching her, no doubt trying to figure out what was going on inside of her head. "My dreams kind of became impossible so I'm still figuring that part out."

There, that worked.

Klaus quirked a brow at that, not quite believing what she was saying. In order for  _all_  of her dreams to be impossible now they had to have been very limited. Surely she had wanted more than this small town had to offer. "There isn't anywhere that you've wanted to see? Nothing that's jumped out at you while watching what passes for entertainment these days?"

Well. When he put it that way. "You seemed to be taken by the drawing I did of the castle," Klaus continued, nodding toward it.

"Well,  _yeah_ , what girl isn't intrigued by castles?" Caroline blamed the princess stage she went through between the age three to seven. "I've never actually been anywhere though. We went to the beach once when I was younger but I don't really remember it." Aside from her parents arguing, but that was it.

Klaus leaned forward, enjoying the hint of excitement he glimpsed in her eyes. "I'll take you. Anywhere you want to go. The beach, a castle-I own a number of them throughout Europe. Where would you like to start? The shores of the Mediterranean or the fjords of Northern Europe? Perhaps the Scottish Isles? Or should we start inland and venture to the almost never ending field of tulips?"

She blinked, trying to grasp what he was saying, certain for a second that she hadn't heard him correctly. But it was sincerity in his voice, the almost boyish earnestness of his gaze that had her knowing she hadn't imagined it.

It was too much, too soon though, and she placed her plate of uneaten food back down on the table before standing. "You can't just offer to take me places!"

Klaus shrugged, not seeing what the big deal was with his suggestions, especially not when she seemed so intrigued by them at first. "I believe that I just did, love." He picked up the champagne bottle and poured two glasses full, offering one to her.

Caroline nearly declined it but alcohol might actually make this conversation make sense to her. People didn't just offer to take others places. That so did not happen. Not outside of movies at least and her life was definitely not a romcom. "It's not normal," she told him as she sipped at the champagne while moving away from the couch. He was still entirely too close even if he was on the other side of the coffee table. "You don't even know me."

Not really. Not  _her_ , not Caroline Forbes.

He watched her walk away, noted that her gaze drifted to the art on the walls again before quickly snapping away. "Your words are pretty, your offers enticing, but they're..." she paused, fiddling with the flute's handle. "Hollow. You know what I want, Klaus?" Caroline turned to look at him. "I want to go to prom next year, most likely win it, graduate valedictorian of my class, and maybe they're simple things. Not really grand scheme kind of plans." Though they had been once, stepping stones to her future.

Klaus frowned at that. They were so utterly human, these things she strove to do. So far beneath her and he hated that she didn't see it. "What use do you have for prom or graduation? You're a vampire, Caroline. You can go to far more impressive gatherings than a high school dance. Graduation is hardly a concern either. That piece of paper will be useless in a handful of decades."

"Seriously?" He had to be joking with that entire spiel. "Just because I'm a vampire doesn't mean I have to give up on  _everything_  that I ever wanted. I've wanted to attend prom for  _years_. So I'm going to do it. Same with graduating. I didn't just invest almost three years in high school to give up on it now." Caroline set the glass down, narrowing her eyes as she looked back at him. "How would you like it if you suddenly weren't allowed to do what you've been dreaming of for the last couple of years because you became a werewolf-vampire thing? So sorry, not allowed anymore. That's what  _vampires_  do and you're not one anymore."

Klaus couldn't help the amused grin spreading across his lips, especially not when she tried to use a British accent for her last two points. "Hybrid, love," he clarified for her as he rose. Clearly getting her away from such small time dreams was going to take some time. He could see that she  _wanted_  more than these simple ideas she spoke of but something was keeping her back from them. He'd figure it out soon enough. "I tend not to listen when anyone tells me I can't do something."

"Yeah, you seem like the kind of guy who can't take no for an answer," she mumbled, stepping away again as he moved from the table. "Is that an only child thing?" Because she was kind of bad at taking no as answer too…

"I have four siblings, Caroline. You've met at least one." He smiled at her baffled look, taking advantage of her stopping to stop beside her. "Kol. I believe he got you away from the wolves and delivered the first phone to you."

"He's your brother?" She frowned, annoyed that she hadn't picked that up.

Klaus nodded. "Finn is elsewhere. Elijah is around in town and Rebekah arrived this morning." There was another, Henrik, but speaking of him was a burden he wasn't quite ready to share with her. "You'll see her around. For some reason she wishes to attend high school." He shrugged. "I try not to understand her whims."

Four vampires, very  _old_  vampires, ones with considerable strength were now going to be in Mystic Falls. That couldn't possibly go well. Not with her mother and the Founding Families trying to deal with the 'vampire problem'. Technically Damon's death had solved that but it wasn't like Klaus ate bunnies and Kol didn't look like he did either. So there was probably going to be even more of a vampire problem, far worse than before.

"Why are they all coming here?" It was Mystic Falls. There wasn't anything special about this place. "I'm sure they'd rather be somewhere far more exciting."

Klaus stared at her, wondering how she hadn't possibly figured out the answer to that question. "You're here, love." They'd known of her for centuries, helped him work to find her and break the curse their mother had laid on him all those years ago. Built an empire that grew every day. Always and forever was a vow that they took very seriously.

"Right." She really didn't know how to respond to that at all. Worse though was how her fingers itched to reach over and run along his skin, how her body longed to be tucked against his. Remembering how perfect it had felt to be curled up in his arms in her dream the night before definitely wasn't helping Caroline keep the need at bay.

Especially not when she caught his eye, sucking in a breath at the heat she saw there. His hunger was different than when others looked at her, not at all like the teenage boys she was used to glancing her over. His was deeper, tinged with a darkness to it that practically vibrated with danger. Her fangs prickled her gums, dying to come out in his presence and Caroline reeled back, putting more distance between them.

She didn't want to talk about herself anymore. Revealing parts of her to him seemed like a dangerous game. "Did you really do these?" she asked, stopping in front of the sketches. Wasn't that what he'd said? Though...she didn't remember Hades painting or sketching. Nothing at all like that synched up in her mind with the goddess' memories.

Klaus could tell that she was starting to shut down, to pull away all over again, but her question gave him an opening and he wasn't about to waste it. "I did." He stepped forward, keeping well away from her still so she wouldn't bolt. "I prefer charcoal for sketches but oils for when I paint. Though watercolors can be useful at times."

Her brow furrowed, trying to pull out anything that reflected that in Hades but she kept coming up short. "When did you start?" She could see the emotion in them, even if they were drawings of land and monuments. The wonder at the beauty and a touch of loneliness that she hadn't expected.

He paused, trying to remember exactly. It had been centuries ago and was a period he didn't like to reflect back on, but Caroline was showing an interest and Klaus found that he couldn't deny her. "I was five, maybe a little younger. There was a lack of canvas back then. Cave walls were a preferred area." At least in the parts that Mikael didn't venture to. "They might still be there."

She looked over at him, eyes widening. "Really? Like the caves near the Falls? Those ones?"

"I wasn't lying when I told you that my family was here first." He canted his head toward her, smirking in amusement before heading back to refill his glass.

Caroline scraped her teeth against her lower lip, trying to process what he was telling her. "Hades didn't paint."

"No, he didn't. We're not carbon copies of them, love. Our histories are not the same. They've unfolded for the both of us in vastly different ways even if the memories will forever linger." A thousand years had shown him that they didn't leave, especially not the ones he'd had of her.

She turned to face him at that. "So like can't you just move on? Find some other girl out there to be your new...queen or whatever." Her stomach clenched tightly at that idea, twisting at the mere thought of him coveting another when she was in his life now.

"From your quite adorable scowl, Caroline," Klaus started as he settled onto the couch again. "I'm sure you've realized that our histories might have changed but the feelings that run between us won't be severed."

"You don't actually know that though. Not really," she told him before turning back to the sketches. "You've spent a thousand years searching for a memory and now that you're presented with it you think that you want it. Give it a few weeks and you'll see that you don't." Everyone else in her life had figured out that she wasn't actually worth it so why shouldn't Klaus as well?

His gaze darkened at that, wanting to know who had planted such an atrocious idea in her head. He'd carefully and systematically dissect them, keeping them alive to endure the pain of watching their body be cut away as they seemed to have done to her self-worth. "You're wrong."

Caroline shrugged, not believing that for a moment. "We'll see."

She turned to face him, standing a little taller, her chin lifted as she looked down at him. She was the spitting image of Persephone in that moment but it was one Klaus didn't like, not with the sadness he noted in her eyes. He'd seen that before in the memories, back when she'd first been abducted. He wanted her smiles and her laughter, to be the cause of those emotions not this sorrow. "But I think we've done enough for today," she continued as she tucked a stray curl behind her ear. "I told you my dreams. You shared sketches. Let's leave it at that."

Klaus raised his glass to her with a nod. "Same time next week." That would give him a chance to figure out how else to pull at the longing he could see, allow Rebekah and Tyler to play their parts as well.

"Sure." Like she had a choice. He'd just show up if she didn't agree to it.

"One moment." He was off the couch before she could leave though and took down the sketch of the Eiffel Tower. "I couldn't help but notice that you were drawn to this one the most. Keep it. I insist." Klaus handed it to her and she hesitated for a moment but eventually accepted it before quickly leaving the room.

He watched her go before sinking back down onto the couch, going over the conversation they'd had. First order of business definitely had to be getting Caroline out of her human mindset and limited dreams. Perhaps doing that would open her up to all of the other possibilities that were laid out for her.

* * *

Caroline groaned as she flicked on the lights as she entered the kitchen. She had nearly left the framed sketch in the car, not quite sure she wanted it inside the house. Except it'd be easier for someone to find it there than tucked away in the back of her closet. No one went in there except her. It wasn't like her mom was going to want to borrow one of her outfits and Bonnie knew better than to mess with her system for hanging everything.

She froze as soon as she'd stepped onto the tiled floor, back straightening as she sensed someone else in the house. Her mother was at work, not supposed to be off for a few more hours, and Bonnie would have texted to let her know she was staying again.

"Matt?" she called out, wondering if he was hunkered down on the couch. She was pretty sure he had a shift at the Grill though and wouldn't be off until later that night too.

She didn't expect to see Stefan step into the kitchen and sighed, hoping he wasn't here for Round 2 of 'let's take down Klaus'. She really should have known there was going to be another attempt to recruit her and Bonnie. The Salvatores were never all that good at taking no for an answer.

"Stefan," she started, ready to tell him to not even bother, but her words dried up at his smile.

There wasn't anything happy about it. This one was cruel, sadistic almost with the way his eyes darkened, the hatred that she saw there causing her to tense up. But it was his words that told her she was in trouble.

"I don't think your mother would approve of the company you keep, Caroline."

She tried to get to the door, to flash out of the house and away from him, but he'd assumed she would and caught her first, slamming her head into the kitchen wall. "Why don't we have a chat with her when she gets home and find out," he muttered as his hands locked around her neck and everything went black.

 


	9. Chapter 9

_The night in her eyes grew darker as she cried her sadness in the stars_   
**Vazaki Nada**

* * *

There had been little progress made on the recent murders. Elena's body had been easily identifiable, all of the department having known her, but the other woman was still listed as unidentified. She hadn't come up in any searchable database and Liz couldn't stand a loose end like that. One had it's throat torn into, signalling that it had to do with vampires in some way. The other's heart had been ripped out of its chest, though she and her deputies were at a loss for  _why_  a vampire would kill in that way.

It had seemed ritualistic but all of her feelers about what kind of ritual might have been taking place had led to dead ends. Nothing added up and she hated it. Add in the fact that one of the deceased had been Elena Gilbert, a girl she'd known her whole life, one of her daughter's best friends and the fact that Liz couldn't wrap her head around the situation was beyond frustrating.

She wanted to be able to give Bonnie and Caroline some sort of closure. Being able to provide answers would help with that but so far there simply were none.

Liz pulled into the driveway, thankful that Caroline's car was already under the carport. With everything that was happening in Mystic Falls she didn't like the idea of her daughter being out late. She really didn't like the fact that Caroline was probably home alone but the chances of her getting off work early were slim to none with all that was happening.

"How was your first day back?" Liz called as she walked into the house, tossing her keys onto the kitchen table.

There was no answer and she sighed, not surprised. Her daughter didn't always respond right away, might have her headphones on and not have heard her yet. Or might be in the shower. Shrugging off her jacket she hung it up on one of the hooks by the door before heading further into the house.

"Stefan?" She hadn't expected to see him but it wasn't a complete surprise. Matt and Bonnie had both been over the last few nights and considering he was Elena's boyfriend having him stop by for company made sense. "I've been trying to contact Damon but he hasn't been answering my calls."

"He's dead so I wouldn't expect him to return your message any time soon," Stefan replied as she rounded the couch.

Liz nearly stumbled at his words, but it was the lack of emotion in his voice that stood out the most for her. Finding her daughter slowly waking up beside him on the couch caused the hairs on the back of her neck to stand. Something was definitely off with this situation.

"Did you know that Caroline has been keeping things from you, Liz?" Stefan asked before she watched his face shift, fangs slipping out of his gums before he tore into his wrist.

She automatically reached for her gun, quickly removing it from her holster and leveled it at him. It contained regular bullets which wouldn't do much but she had to do something. He was faster than she could react though and had Caroline tugged up and positioned in front of him before she could shoot. Liz kept her gun trained on him, waiting for a shot to open up. She needed to get the monster away from Caroline before he could hurt her.

"Don't do this, Stefan," Caroline begged, tears wet her cheeks as she looked over at Liz. "Please. She doesn't have to know."

"Klaus ruined my life," Stefan muttered, and Liz frowned trying to figure out what the newcomer to town had to do with whatever was transpiring in her living room. He looked over at her again. "He killed Elena. Maybe Damon too. And your  _daughter_ has been seeing him." His grip tightened on Caroline, shifting the two of them in the room and Liz followed, keeping her gun trained on him as they moved.

"You're going to let Caroline go, Stefan, and then we can talk this out," Liz told him, trying to keep her voice even, to remain calm.

"There's nothing to talk about," Stefan told her as he slit his wrist again and brought it up.

Liz watched in horror as her daughter's eyes darkened, fangs slipping out of her mouth. "No." It wasn't possible. Her daughter couldn't be one of them. Caroline couldn't be a monster. Her arms fell a little as she took a step back, world seeming to spin as she stared at the shell of her little girl.

"Mommy, I'm so sorry," Caroline cried out- _no_ , it wasn't Caroline. She couldn't think of her like that. That wasn't her daughter. Her daughter was…

Dead.

Liz's gaze drifted back to her face as she tried to wrap her head around this new knowledge, tried to figure out how her daughter could have died without her knowing. "Don't worry, Sheriff. I'll be taking care of this vampire problem for you," Stefan assured her and Liz shifted her gaze to him, wondering what he was going on about.

"Just remember that I love you," Caroline whispered and Liz watched as the girl flinched, no doubt because of the anger she was displaying as she looked back at her.

How dare this thing say that to her? "Don't you say that to me, monster," Liz told her, hating that this thing was there in Caroline's place. When had she died? How?

The crying that happened next was too much like Caroline's, the devastation in the thing's eyes too real for Liz to be able to handle. "You should have helped me take down Klaus, Caroline," Stefan muttered and then Liz was standing in the living room on her own, the other two nowhere to be seen.

She turned around, gun at the ready as she tried to locate them, finding only the back door swinging open to signal the path they had gone. She needed to find her wooden bullets, to alert her deputies as to what was going on, and find the two of them and Klaus. They needed to take them out. She pulled out her phone and started dialing.

"Sheriff Forbes?"

Liz whirled around at her name, slowly lowering her gun as she spotted Bonnie standing in doorway now. "Are you okay?"

She raised the gun again, not sure that Bonnie wasn't one of them too. After all she hadn't known that Caroline had become one. "What are you doing here, Bonnie?"

Bonnie frowned, hands raised as she stared at her. "I wanted talk to Caroline. See how her first day back went? Why do you have your gun out?" Her eyes widened as various possibilities ran through her mind and she headed inside, looking frantically around the room. "Did he come for her?" She turned back to look at Liz. "Klaus? Did he get her?"

That was the second time someone had mentioned that one. He definitely had to be involved. "I know this will sound strange but she's…Caroline isn't who she used to be. She's..." Explaining vampires to someone was always difficult.

Bonnie glanced around the room as she tried to figure out what had happened because she wasn't sure that Liz would actually be useful. There was a phone she hadn't seen before poking out between the couch cushions and she slipped it into pocket when Liz wasn't looking "Where is she?"

"I don't know. Stefan took her. He'll deal with her." At least she wouldn't have to kill the creature with her daughter's face.

Stefan. Of course it'd be him. Bonnie stared at Liz, not liking the idea of Stefan 'dealing' with Caroline at all. He wasn't thinking clearly, anyone could see that.

"I need to assemble a task force," Liz told Bonnie, trying to figure out exactly what they needed to do, how to handle this situation. "Sit down. I'll call your father to come and get you. This town is about to go on curfew."

"I'm really sorry for this, Sheriff Forbes," Bonnie murmured before using her magic to give the woman a crippling headache. She used that opportunity to hightail it out of the house and to her car, swiping open the phone she'd found as she headed out.

There were only three names programmed into it. Hers, Mom, and Klaus.

Bonnie knew she could locate Caroline with ease. A locator spell would be simple enough but there was no guarantee that she could actually get to her friend in time. She didn't have that kind of speed. But he would.

With a sigh she pressed the number and waited for someone to pick up. "Now this is a surprise," Klaus started, and Bonnie swallowed at the sound of his voice. He sounded entirely too friendly, as if having conversations with Caroline wasn't too farfetched. "I thought you were explicitly against actual conversation over the phone, love. That you preferred texting."

"Stefan took Caroline," Bonnie replied, getting right to the point. The more time wasted, the less time there was to actually help Caroline.

* * *

They were somewhere in the woods. From the police tape that was still strung between the rocks and trees Caroline had a feeling they were at the ritual site, but she couldn't be sure. She hadn't been there and it wasn't like deaths hadn't become a common occurrence in Mystic Falls during the last few months. Not that she had much time to contemplate the space Stefan had brought them.

He'd cracked her ribs as soon as they'd set foot into the area, dug his hand into her chest right after to tear a few of them from her body. It was agony to breathe, to cry, to try and speak as he shoved her bones through her palms, using them to anchor her to the ground.

"Why are you doing this?"

She couldn't understand this level of rage, this need he seemed to have to make her hurt, to bleed. His answering smile was all wrong, not at all like the Stefan she thought she knew. But what did she really know about him? Not much aside from the front he'd decided to show them. If Damon could play a part in front of others then it only made sense that Stefan could as well.

"I saw the way he looked at you when you left his house tonight," Stefan told her before twisting her leg hard enough to break her femur. He seemed to relish her corresponding screams, delighted in the way her eyes welled with tears. "That was the way I looked at Elena."

She tensed at that, knowing there would be no reprieve for her if Stefan knew that Klaus cared for her. He wanted Klaus to pay for Elena and what better way to exact revenge than by killing who Klaus loved? She didn't want to die but no one knew that Stefan had taken her aside from her mother and Caroline couldn't see that woman lifting a finger to help her now.

Not when Liz knew what she was.

Not when her mother so thoroughly hated her.

There was no time to convince her otherwise like she'd done last time. She'd compelled those memories away, made her mother forget that she'd come to accept her in order to keep the Salvatores safe. And now she was going to die by one of their hands.

Stefan stripped one of the branches that was laying on the ground, tearing into smaller pieces. "He made me watch as he killed her." He stood, using the bit of distance to give him a better angle to throw the pieces of wood so they'd pierce her body with more impact. She flinched at each one, gasping for breath as pain radiated through her. "I begged, I pleaded, but he didn't listen."

"You don't have to do this. Elena was my friend. She wouldn't want you to do this," she rasped out, cursing as he stepped on one of her ribs, causing it to drive further into the ground through her skin.

"You can beg and plead all you want, Caroline. I'm not going to listen to you either." He plunged another piece of branch into her skin, twisting it to increase the pain. "It's not like anyone is going to miss you when you're dead. Not like they miss Elena. There will be no memorial service. Do you think Matt will even bother going to your funeral or breaking down like he did over her?"

He tore the makeshift stake out again before stabbing it through her shoulder.

Caroline clenched her eyes closed, wishing she could shut her ears as well, anything that would help her not hear everything he was saying. She hated that Stefan managed to voice her every insecurity. "Not even your mom will miss you. I doubt she'll even bury you properly now that she knows what you are."

She let out a heart wrenching sob at that, remembering the look of disgust her mother had when she'd seen her fangs, when she'd tried to apologize for what she had become. Any fight she had in her seemed to deflate as she pictured that, hating that Stefan was probably right. Her mother would push any memory of her away, probably blot her existence out from the house, pretend she'd never had a daughter. Just like she seemed to pretend she'd never had a husband.

It'd be as if she never existed.

Klaus would probably forget her as well, cling to the memory of the goddess who had come before and not the baby vampire he'd barely met. That thought hurt more than any stake or bone ever could, painfully clenching her heart.

Stefan tilted his head as he considered her. "I've always wondered how long it takes to regrow an eyeball."

Her eyes opened quickly at that, widening as she watched him twirl the piece of branch he still had around in his hand. His arm was wrenched back before he could swing it toward her. "I'll be more than happy to help you find that out later, mate," Klaus told him before snapping Stefan's neck. "Elijah, do be a good brother and deal with  _this_." He tossed the vampire to the side and Caroline couldn't help but sob at the sight of him. She didn't know how he'd known that she was in trouble or how to find her, but she couldn't contain the onslaught of emotions that were tumbling in on her.

"Shhh. This is going to hurt, sweetheart, but it'll be over in a minute," Klaus assured her as he knelt down, quickly tearing away the bones and bits of wood that Stefan had used to skewer her. He picked her up, cradling her against his chest as she continued to cry, face pressing into his shoulder. The way she winced at the movement alerted him to the fact that her ribs and leg weren't fully healed yet.

Klaus angled his neck, shifting her so that she could reach it easier. "Take what you need, Caroline. The blood will help you heal." At least physically. He didn't like how broken she seemed to appear. It was easy to heal bruises and breaks, but Klaus had learned long ago that psychological damage was much harder to come back from. It was why he enjoyed prolonging his torture of those who betrayed him. Having Katherine run for centuries on end, never knowing when he might kill her, disposing of those she loved along the way had been far more satisfying than simply pulling out her heart the first time he could.

But seeing Caroline in this distraught state was something he didn't want, wondering what precisely Stefan had said or done to cause such emotion to bubble out of her. This was more than her broken bones and pierced skin, he could tell that. Especially when she didn't sink her teeth into his neck as he'd suggested, simply continued sobbing as he turned with her in his arms.

"I'll meet you at home," Klaus informed Elijah before flashing off.

* * *

Bonnie paced the room as she waited for any news on Caroline. She'd managed to do a locator spell easily enough. Being in Caroline's house meant she'd had plenty of objects to choose from of her friends. Klaus had arrived before she'd finished with others in tow and had been left just as quickly when she narrowed down Caroline and Stefan's location.

She hadn't been sure what to make of Klaus then. There had been little emotion being shown from him, but she had noticed the ripple of fear in his eyes when she said where the two were at before he'd left. Nothing about his reaction made sense. She couldn't figure out  _why_  he seemed to be concerned for Caroline's welfare. It didn't add up at all with what they had learned about the monster.

Elena was supposed to have been his target and obviously her friend had been because she was dead. But something else was going on, a bigger picture that she couldn't quite wrap her head around. She was missing a vital piece and had a feeling that once she had it that the puzzle would finally make sense.

"Your friend will be fine. Nik isn't about to let anything happen to her," Kol told her from where he was lounging on the sofa of the room they were in.

She had reluctantly headed back to Klaus' estate with him, knowing that when Caroline was found that she wouldn't be returning to her home. Not yet at least. Things needed to be smoothed over with her mother first and that could take a while. Bonnie would have preferred heading off to the ritual site as well, but the others had flashed away too fast and Kol had so graciously pointed out that it'd all be over by the time she managed to get there.

Bonnie tried to ignore Kol, wanting to interact with him as little as possible, but he obviously knew pieces of the puzzle that she was missing. "Why is he so interested in her? I thought he wanted Elena." That's what everyone had said.

Kol glanced over at her, thoroughly amused by her confusion. It was always fun to see how wrong everyone was about what was actually happening. Most believed the whole sun and moon curse, thinking that they'd unlock walking in the sunlight or stop having to turn into a werewolf on the fullmoon. And even those who knew that was a hoax, a nice little rumor he and his siblings had spread about to have vampires and werewolves helping them to find key ingredients, didn't fully understand what the real endgame was.

Just as he'd enjoyed spreading around the myths of garlic or crosses being ways to ward off his kind, he'd delighted in spreading around the tales of the sun and moon curse. Seeing people riled up, so easily fooled was always a good time. Orchestrating their movements like they were puppets for him to play with was even better. He was going to miss how easily others fell into that trap now that his brother had broken the curse.

"He wanted the doppelganger's blood," Kol told her with a wave of his hand. "It didn't matter which of them as long as they were human. Katherine would have worked just as well five hundred years ago. Before she went and killed herself so she could turn." He pushed himself up so he could see her better. "Your little friend is something far more precious to Nik."

Bonnie frowned, not liking the way Kol was talking about Caroline in regards to Klaus. "I wouldn't want to be the Salvatore boy," Kol continued with a laugh, thinking of all the ways Klaus would end up destroying Stefan.

"He's going to kill him, isn't he?" Bonnie asked, not too sure how she felt about that. Though if Stefan was hurting Caroline then he was too far gone to be helped. Letting him go would only lead to more threats against Caroline if Klaus really did deem her as precious. Stefan wanted Klaus to pay for Elena and Damon and Bonnie didn't think he'd care that he would be hurting Caroline to do so.

Kol's lips curled into a smile at that, showed far too many teeth for Bonnie's liking. "Oh no. He won't kill him. What he'll do to Stefan Salvatore will be far worse than death." He rubbed his hands together, obviously excited about the prospect.

Bonnie watched him, not even bothering to hide her disgust. God, she really didn't like vampires. "But let's talk about you, Bonnie Bennett. You and your magic," Kol told her and she crossed her arms at that. Talking about her magic with a vampire was definitely something she didn't want to do. "I saw that my family and I aren't the only new faces in town. Though I suppose that Abby isn't really a  _new_  face. I'm sure you had quite the little reunion?"

Her eyes narrowed at the mention of her mom. "She's not as bright as I'd hoped she would be. Nowhere near as gifted as other Bennetts that I know," Kol continued with a sigh. "Decent enough and she's come a long way since when I first met her, but she's not anywhere near as powerful as you could be."

"You know my mother?" Her stomach flopped at the possibility that maybe Abby hadn't come back because she'd actually wanted to. But just because Kol apparently knew her at some point in her life didn't mean that he and Abby were still close, right?

"We've met a time or two." Kol leaned back against the sofa, watching her carefully for her reaction.

Bonnie had plenty of questions to ask about that, wanted to know what exactly had happened during those meetings, but she heard sounds from outside the room they were in. She headed out of it, spotting Klaus heading up the stairs with Caroline in his arms.

Bonnie moved to follow, wanting to make sure her friend was alright, to assess the damage, but Kol was in front of her before she could take a step. "I want to see Caroline."

Kol shrugged as he looked up the now empty staircase. "That won't be happening tonight. She'll need to heal. Rest. You can see her in the morning. I'm sure someone will give you a call when she wakes." He nodded down the hall toward the front door, doubting that she would actually head that way.

"I'm not going anywhere until I know she's okay." There was simply no way she was leaving Caroline in this house alone. Not when she was still couldn't make sense of what exactly was happening with everything.

Kol clapped his hands, pleased with her answer. Unlike her mother, Bonnie Bennett seemed to actually have the fire inside that was tied to the Bennett witch line. "We should make up a room for you then, little witch."

Bonnie crossed her arms, wishing she hadn't been left with the irritating one of Klaus' groupies. "Lead the way."

Staying would work, at least for the night. She could rest and listen, go over all she did know again and maybe in the morning when she did speak to Caroline, Bonnie would finally be able to get the last piece she needed in order to know what was really going on. Including how her mother might be involved as well.

* * *

Dealing with an emotionally raw Caroline was something that Klaus wasn't quite sure how to handle. He might have caused numerous such outburst in others, but he'd usually watched from the sidelines, enjoying the moment when they would cave in on themselves. There would be no sticking to the background now though as he carried her up the stairs and headed to his room.

Kol would be handling Bonnie. He'd need to thank the witch for her quick report of what was happening, fully aware that without her alerting him that he might not have made it to her in time. Those who were supposed to be on watch would be dealt with later, their mistake would cost them their lives. Those who betrayed him would suffer for eternity, but those who were idiots were not worth more than it would take for him to rip out their heart.

Klaus sat down on the sofa that was set off to the side in his room, settling Caroline in his lap. She didn't make a noise now, her sobs having stopped, but she kept her face tucked into his neck. Her body shook every so often and he stroked her hair as he wracked his brain for how to help her with how she was feeling. Dried blood streaked her hair and he knew it had to be on her clothes as well, remnants of what Stefan had done to her dotting her skin.

"I want to take a bath" Caroline murmured, breaking the silence between them. She still didn't pull away from him though, hands curling tighter into his shirt where she clung to him. Klaus felt safe, his presence helping her to center herself, and she wasn't ready for him to disappear just yet.

"I'll retrieve some clothes from your room here for you to choose from to change into," Klaus replied, pleased that she was at least speaking. He'd waited centuries to hold her in his arms, to feel her welcoming his embrace instead of fearing it. But this wasn't how it was supposed to happen. She was never to be hurt by others in order to have her reaching for him.

Not that he was about to shirk her off or deny Caroline the touch that she so obviously needed. He kept up his gentle stroking of her hair when she made no move to rise, his other arm tightened around her a bit more, wanting to offer comfort as best he could. Klaus closed his eyes and breathed her in, the scent of her blood angering him instead of drawing him in like it should have. Stefan would endure countless centuries of misery for how he'd hurt her.

Caroline flexed her fingers against his chest as she tried to gather the strength she needed to actually break away from Klaus. "He'll never touch you again, Caroline," Klaus promised with an edge to his voice that sent shivers down her spine. She could only imagine the horrors that were in store for Stefan.

If he'd only tortured her she might have still tried to get him a reprieve, might have had in her to attempt to persuade Klaus to let him go. But he'd shown her mother the truth about her in the worst way possible and Caroline didn't think she would ever forgive Stefan Salvatore for that. He could have simply taken her, brought her to the site and tortured her before leaving her dead body for Klaus to eventually find. But no, he'd wanted her to hurt so he'd hit her where she was most vulnerable.

She felt no sympathy for him.

"Good."

She'd expected for her voice to sound hollow but instead there was an edge to it that was far too similar to Klaus' promise for her liking. Reluctantly she pulled back. "I think I'll take that bath now."

Caroline couldn't bear to look at him just then, well aware of how much of a mess she must have looked. But Klaus tilted her chin so that she had to. "Take as long as you need, love," he told her as he looked her over, lips pursed when she glanced away from him. "I'll get you some clothing choices. If you need anything just say my name and I'll be here."

She nodded at that before rising as she glanced around the room, not entirely certain where the bathroom was located. "You'll want the first door on that wall," Klaus told her, motioning to the wall closest to them. "The second is to my closet. I'll set out clothes on the bed for you."

He rose as well. "And I'm going to need to insist that you feed. You need blood, Caroline. I can get blood bags if I must." He wasn't fond of keeping them around but if it was all she'd take he'd accept that for now.

Klaus rolled up the sleeves of his henley and extended his arm. "Or you can have some of mine."

Caroline licked her lips as she stared at his arm. She should ask for the blood bags, should stick to what she usually used. But her mother hated her, wanted nothing to do with her and had called her a monster. Being a stickler for blood bags didn't seem all that important when half the reason she'd kept to them had basically left her for dead.

She stepped forward before she knew what she was doing, drawing her fingers along his palm and over his wrist before she was standing right next to him. She couldn't quite bring herself to look at him as she stared down at the vein she could see running beneath his skin. Her fangs slid out, the need to feed causing her to shake as she brought his arm up and sank them into it.

Caroline vaguely heard him moan as she drank from him, felt his other hand tangle in her hair as her grip tightened around his arm. He let her take as much as she wanted, fought back the urge to crush her back to his chest and sink his teeth into her shoulder to take his fill. Instead he stepped in closer to her, memorized the feeling of her fangs in his skin and breathed her in. Experiencing it again was far better than simply remembering it.

Eventually she pulled away, licking the last bits of blood from his arm as it healed. Klaus eyes darkened at that, the need to touch her overwhelming. But she stepped back and he let his arms drop, enjoyed the vibrancy that seemed to be seeping back into her as she headed toward the bathroom. She glanced back at him, her gaze curious before closing the door behind her.

Klaus stared at the door for a long moment, the urge to join her in there hard to fight back. But he knew Caroline wasn't quite ready for all that he planned for her. She needed to heal and he could be patient. But for now he had clothes to retrieve and a Salvatore to greet.

* * *

Stefan woke in a cold, dark space. He tried to flash out, to get as far away from wherever he was as soon as he was conscious, but the shackles wrapped around his wrists and ankles prevented him from getting very far. He should have been able break free of them though, or at least that's what he thought. They didn't appear to be laced with vervain to keep him down and he had fed earlier that day. Not on a rabbit either, but a random hiker he'd found in the woods. What was the point to staving off the monster when Elena and Damon were both gone?

"You can thank the Bennett witch for that little trick," Klaus told him from the shadows and Stefan tried again to move forward further. He wanted to rip out the vampire's heart, to cause even a fraction of the pain he was carrying with him.

Klaus arched a brow, nearly amused by the Salvatore's persistence before kicking Stefan's legs out from underneath him. He was on the vampire as soon as his back hit the ground, boot pressing down his neck. "I'd have thought you'd be far more entertaining than you've turned out to be after all the rumors I heard about you through the years. The Ripper of Monterey, along with so many others. Far more entertaining than that brother of yours."

Stefan tried to push him off, to find a bit of leverage, but Klaus didn't budge. "You could have been useful." A nice weapon to bring out whenever he felt like using it.

Klaus pressed down harder, lips curling as he heard the crunching of bones. Stefan clawed at his leg, trying to get him to stop, but that did little to persuade him. "But you went after Caroline and that's something I can't forgive." Definitely something he wouldn't be forgetting.

He stepped back then, letting Stefan's body start to heal as he crouched down in front of him. "You won't make a move toward me right now, mate," Klaus compelled, grinning at the confusion in Stefan's face when he couldn't attack like he wanted. "Funny thing about being an Original vampire. We can compel other vampires. It's a nice little trick that most don't know about." Not many in the world knew too much about them. Having some mystery to who they were and what they could do helped to insure their continued reign.

"Why her?" Stefan couldn't help but ask. He couldn't see what had drawn the monster to the blonde.

Klaus grinned. "That's the question of the day, isn't it?" He pushed himself back up. "And it's one you don't deserve an answer to." He yanked on the chains, drawing Stefan up as well. "I'd say ask Katherine what happens when you try to work against me, but her torture session ended last week and she's a bit mum on the subject." He patted Stefan's shoulder. "Death will do that to a person."

His fingers dug into Stefan's shoulder at that, cracking the bones there and enjoying the pain that reverberated through the man's face. "You're never going to touch Caroline again. You won't so much as look at her." Klaus held up a small spoon then.

"Which brings me to what you were wondering earlier in the evening." He tapped Stefan's nose with the utensil, enjoying the fear that began to creep into the vampire's eyes, that decadent scent beginning to fill the air between them. "You're going to use this to dig out your eyeball and then count to see how long it takes to grow back. You'll repeat the same process on the other one and keep on switching between them until I deem you finished. It's best to have multiple pieces of data to truly be able to say how long it might take." He nearly stepped back before locking his gaze with Stefan's again. "Oh, and Stefan, there will be no attempts at killing yourself."

Klaus handed him the spoon and spun around. "Welcome to your eternity, mate."

Stefan's cries of pain echoed in the chamber as he left, giving Klaus another bounce to his step. Now with that out the way, he could pick out a few outfits for Caroline to choose from for the night.

* * *

Caroline knew that there was no saving her dress, between the blood and the holes Stefan had made in it she didn't even want to attempt to salvage it. Which  _sucked_. It had been a favorite of hers and she didn't think she'd seen any others like it the last time she was at the store. Another thing to add to the list of things he'd manage to rip from her. Not as important as the whole having a mother had been, but she was adding the destruction of the dress to her list anyway.

She sank down into the water, letting it flow over her and stared up at the ceiling for a moment. She had scrubbed her skin nearly raw to try and get the blood off, to get the feeling of vulnerability and helplessness off of her skin. The blood was gone but the emotions still lingered and Caroline wished it was opposite.

Blood she could handle.

Being a vampire had meant not having to cower, not being an easy mark like she had been as a human. It had made her feel stronger and Stefan had gone and ripped that sense of power away from her as well. She hated him for that, despised that he'd manage to hurt her as badly as his brother had. Like Katherine had managed before she was able to outplay her.

Caroline wasn't ever going to let anyone make her feel that powerless again.

She pushed herself back up and pulled out the plug to let the water start to drain as she stepped out of the tub. The towel she wrapped around her body was softer than any she had ever used. It had her wondering what thread count it might have as she folded her destroyed clothes and set them onto the counter. Her bra was added to the pile but she slipped her underwear back on, not quite sure what options Klaus might have chosen for her to wear.

She stared at her reflection in the mirror, pleased that any external signs of what she'd been through were gone. No amount of forced cheerfulness could seem to make her actually smile though. Maybe if he'd only tortured her, only tried to kill her, she could have been able to settle back into her 'everything is fine!' routine. But he'd shown her mother what she was and now…

Caroline pressed her palms against the cold granite of the counter, eyes clenching closed, as she thought of the horror her mother had displayed when she looked at her. She'd seen that look before a few months ago, had managed to help show her mom that she wasn't bad that time, but Caroline wasn't so sure how to go about doing it this time. Mostly because she couldn't get over the fact that her mom had let Stefan take her, that the woman hadn't even tried to stop him from leaving with her when it was obvious that his intentions were seriously not good.

But Klaus had been able to find her.

Maybe her mom had called him?

Or maybe he had people following her and one of them had alerted him and her mother hadn't raised any kind of alarm.

Taking a few deep breaths, she pushed the images from her mind and looked back in the mirror. Her smile was miniscule but it was better than nothing. At least she wasn't covered in her own blood any longer and drinking Klaus' had helped as well.

Tightening the towel around her body, she walked back out into the bedroom, biting her lip when she didn't find any clothes laid out for her just yet. She didn't hear anyone nearby either, though she could make out voices a little further away. She blocked them out though, not quite wanting to deal with anyone else just yet.

Instead she wandered around the room, wanting to see what she could glimpse about Klaus from his bedroom. The color palette is darker than the one he'd had designed for her, none of the whites being showcased here besides the freshly cut daisies on the table by the window. Reds, browns and golds were everywhere, from the paint to the bedspread to the furniture. There wasn't a touch of modern to it like she'd seen in the bathroom and yet it didn't remind her of the older furniture her grandparents' house had been inundated with either.

There was something regal about everything, a touch of ancient that spoke of power and wealth he had to be accustomed to. Parts of it screamed Hades to her, the colors especially, but there were bits that don't quite ring true to the memories she had. Those pieces were a glimpse into Klaus, the one who lived for a thousand years searching for her.

She stopped in front of a painting that hung over the fireplace. It was of a woman from the back, face not at all visible, and yet Caroline knew he'd drawn her. The hair was longer than she had it now, flowers laced throughout as they had been in her nightmares and wearing a gown that seemed familiar. She reeled back, not quite sure what to make of it, shivering a little as she moved.

Caroline was in front of Klaus' closet before she knew what she was doing, pulling the door open to it with wide eyes as she took in the expansive room for all of his clothes and shoes. He really needed to add a variety of color to his wardrobe. Dark colors were slimming and all but they were boring after a while, needed some pop to make them appealing.

She stopped in front of a neatly stacked pile of shirts and ran her fingers along the fabric before taking in the numerous styles of shoes and boots that were lined up neatly. She liked the order of the closet, how everything was put in its place even if it wasn't quite how she would have set it up.

"Caroline?" Klaus called out and she noted the tinge of worry in his voice, the fear he'd probably experienced at the bathroom door being open and her not being in the room.

She hugged the towel tighter around her body, clearly not having thought the whole walking around in such little clothing through all that well. Most likely he'd have the pajamas she would be able to choose from but Caroline didn't really like the idea of walking out there in her towel. Not when she could remember the heat of Klaus' gaze from earlier that afternoon, and especially not with the taste of his blood still fresh in her mouth. Memories flashed in her mind of the two of them in bed, her stomach clenching at the desire that shot through her, igniting nerve endings that she wasn't even aware she had.

Swallowing, Caroline grabbed one of the shirts from the pile and quickly tugged it on, frowning at the fact that it didn't quite reach mid thigh. Clearly clothing options from his closet were not helpful either.

"I need pants or shorts," she murmured as she walked out with the towel draped over her arms. "But I've got the top covered." It wasn't her usual tank top of choice but Caroline didn't want to part with the henley. It added a sense of safety for her that she didn't want to think about too closely.

She couldn't really blame the way Klaus's gaze seemed to linger on her bare legs as he'd turned to look at her, carrying a couple of options for pajamas. It was his hooded look though when he noted that she was wearing his shirt, his eyes changing to that almost gold color that denoted his monster was right beneath the surface and dying to come out to play. It called to her own, egged it to surface as well but she pushed the urge down.

Instead she walked over to him, holding her head high as she handed over the towel and took the clothing options. "Thanks." Caroline laid them down on the bed, pursing her lips as she looked at the choices. They all reflected what she would have chosen on her own and were all her size. "I really don't want to think about  _how_  you seem to know all of these little details about me." Because it wasn't like Persephone enjoyed cotton pajamas with rainbow polka dot pants and matching tank tops. And Caroline seriously doubted that the whole sizing system had been the same a billion years ago. Or whenever their counterparts had lived.

He flexed his hands, biting back the urge to pull her close, to feel her skin against his own. He'd never been jealous of a shirt before but the fact that his clothing got to effortlessly touch her when he still couldn't quite yet was aggravating.

"I didn't expect you to be finished so soon," Klaus told her as he hung up the towel, not bothering to reveal how he knew her measurements or tastes. Informing Caroline that he'd been watching her for weeks before the ritual would probably not go over all that well. At least not yet. "Was the bathroom not to your liking?" He had assumed she would have indulged in the various bath salts and oils that he had out for use.

Caroline shimmied into a pair of pajama pants, figuring the striped ones with various shades of purple complimented the grey shirt she'd chosen well enough. "I didn't see the point in lingering."

Feeling sorry for herself never worked out well. She was supposed to toughen up, put on that happy face again and move forward. Crying about what had happened wouldn't change anything. It hadn't brought her dad back to Mystic Falls, had never got her mother to stay home instead of heading off to work again. Boys didn't stick around when you were a weepy mess. Even friends didn't want to bother after a while if all you did was mope. People didn't like to hang around the girl who was a disaster.

Not unless someone had died. Then it seemed people expected the mopey, weeping mess.

But she wasn't dead.

Klaus headed back out into the room, watching as she carefully folded the clothes back up before setting them down on the table beside the flowers. He watched her, not entirely sure what he was supposed to say next. Should he offer words of comfort-though what precisely would constitute as comforting was beyond him. Perhaps he should inform her of his plans to torture Stefan for an eternity, let her know all of the pain and misery her attacker would face throughout the centuries?

"Did you fix the door?" Caroline asked, breaking his train of thought. Klaus arched a brow, not quite sure what she was referring to. "The one to my room. That Bonnie and I broke? Well, I broke. She was trying to help with the whole getting out of this place thing. I'm guessing that was my room anyway. Everything was pretty much exactly to my tastes. Which is creepy. Because it was like  _my_ tastes. Not like the sunroom which is and isn't my tastes." That one had screamed Persephone at her, soothed the goddess in her bones, but the bedroom had been all her. Like the clothes.

Where was the sobbing mess of a girl from not even an hour ago? The one who had shook in his arms, clearly breaking down as he'd carried her away from Stefan, murmuring that she was safe. Klaus watched her move about his room as she talked, touching things here and there. Her steps nearly faltered once or twice but he watched as she clenched her hands, standing a little taller after each near misstep.

"You were kidnapped and tortured tonight and you're asking about the door?" Klaus asked, wanting to make sure he'd heard her correctly.

He didn't like how she shrugged. "It's over and done with. No point in…"

"Lingering on it?" Klaus asked as he walked over to her, tilting her chin up to be able to see her eyes. She glanced away, not wanting him to see the fear that was still there in them, a sign of how she couldn't quite keep it all together like she was trying.

Caroline pulled away, not liking how his fingers on her skin had her wanting to lean into him, to seek comfort when she was supposed to be perfecting her shell. "So did you fix it or not?"

He didn't like how she was moving away, her avoidance of what had happened. Anyone else doing so wouldn't be a worry. He'd hardly care how others dealt with their own traumas, but seeing Caroline try to bottle it up was something Klaus didn't like. People who did that broke harder than those who dealt with what had happened right after, and she wasn't allowed to go down the road that led to others going mad. That would not be her eternity.

"Are you not at all curious how I knew where you were?" Klaus asked as he followed after her, watching as she stopped moving and actually looked back at him.

"Did my mom…" She tried not to sound too hopeful, but maybe her mom had snapped out of it. Maybe the woman had called for help...not that Caroline could figure out why her mom would call Klaus.

He almost wished he hadn't said anything, not wanting to squash the glimmer of light that she'd showed while also wondering what precisely her mother had to do with anything that had happened. "It was Bonnie who called. Seemed you had dropped the phone I gave you."

Caroline nodded at that, deflating at the fact that it hadn't been her mother, that the woman probably did still hate her. But at least Bonnie had called...though she didn't understand how Bonnie would have even known. Her friend hadn't been there.

"Oh." Her mouth felt dry and she swallowed, trying to fight back the tears that were threatening to spill again. Caroline dug her nails into her palms, working to calm down so Klaus wouldn't witness another breakdown. "That's good."

She'd probably lose Bonnie too once her friend knew all that was really happening. "Which way is my room?" Because she couldn't stay here, couldn't handle his presence when she needed to curl up under her covers and cry her eyes out, needed to be able to feel a little sorry for herself for just a little longer.

"Why did you think it would be your mother, Caroline?" Klaus asked as he slowly walked toward her, noting that she didn't seem to notice how close he was getting this time.

"Cause she was there and she let...she…" Caroline closed her eyes, trying to erase her mom's horrified look from her mind again, but it was seared in and nothing seemed to help vanquish it. "He showed her what I am. She knows I'm a monster and now she hates me. And she didn't do anything when Stefan took me." She pressed her hands to her ears as she took a shaky breath, trying to calm down again. Her hands smoothed down her hair as her body trembled, unable to hold back the tears again.

Fury engulfed him, ran through his veins as he thought of Liz Forbes not lifting a hand to help Caroline when Stefan had apparently ripped her from her house, a place she  _should_  have been safe in. But being angry with that woman would do nothing to ease the pain and betrayal he could see etched in Caroline's skin, a betrayal he'd felt a thousand years ago when Esther had stood silently by as Mikael had done his worst to him.

"I tried so hard to be good," Caroline murmured, sounding utterly defeated. "But I'm never…" Never good enough. Not really. Not enough for someone to pick her first, to stick around like she needed, to simply be there for her.

Klaus didn't know how to soothe her, to ease the pain he clearly make out and so he did what  _he_  needed and pulled her close, hopeful that it would help her some. She clung to him again as she had before, crying harder as he lifted her up and toward the bed to settle her down on. He rubbed at her back as she sobbed, words incomprehensible aside from 'mommy'.

"I can erase it from her mind. Make it so she won't remember what Stefan showed her," Klaus murmured as she quieted down. He'd rather rip Liz Forbes' heart out and serve it for dinner, let the woman become dust, nothing but a distant memory. "But she'll learn of what you are eventually, Caroline. There's no keeping the monster that you are hidden for long."

Caroline didn't reply, not quite sure what to say. Compelling her mother to forget again would only delay the inevitable it seemed. But at least last time the two of them had been able to come to an understanding. She'd never forgive Stefan for taking that away from her. "Let me know how you want to handle it, Caroline, and I will," Klaus continued as he stroked her hair. "But for now you need to rest. Blood heals broken bones but sleep is needed to heal the rest."

She shot up at that, trying to pull away from him at the idea of going to sleep. "No." Because sleep led to dreaming of her death and she  _couldn't_  handle that with everything else that had happened.

Her fear spiked the air, curling around him as he kept his hold on her, not letting her leave the bed. "I won't sleep, Klaus. I don't...I can't," Caroline told him, trembling at the idea of having it. "When I sleep I…"

"Die," Klaus supplied, thumb caressing her cheek as her eyes widened at that. "You'll dream of only pleasant things tonight, Caroline. I'll make sure of that."

"No offence, Klaus, but there's no way you can guarantee that I won't." And she wasn't about to chance her nightmares tonight.

"The Salvatores did a deplorable job of teaching you your abilities, sweetheart," Klaus informed her. "We can manipulate dreams. Even one as young as you can, though it'll be a bit harder if you haven't practiced it."

Caroline stared at him. That couldn't be a thing. "Nothing will hurt you here, Caroline," Klaus continued, gently tugging her to lay back down.

She probably shouldn't have trusted him, should have fought off sleep more, demanded to go to her room and stayed up all night, but his words were soothing and she couldn't discount the promise his words and eyes held. "You're safe," he murmured as she rested her head back down on his chest and slowly closed her eyes.

God how she hoped he wasn't lying to her.

 


End file.
